The brutal 1971 murder of Rita Curran in her own bedroom rocked the tight-knit town of Burlington, Vermont. The circumstances of Rita’s death seemed so random – yet pointed to an insider. The mystifying slaying had no apparent motive and no good leads, and perplexed generations of frustrated investigators. The case was so out there, Ted Bundy was considered a viable suspect, with good reason. Fifty years later, modern DNA technology would reach back in time and give a name to Rita’s killer, helping finally to assuage the heartache of Rita’s family and allowing Burlingtonians to put the tragic murder in their midst behind them.

In may, 1992, a construction worker renovating a home in Fort Wayne, Indiana made a gruesome discovery. In the flooded basement of the home, he discovered a woman's body wrapped in a blanket. Investigators were unable to determine an exact cause of death due to the condition of her remains, although they did make one important discovery; she was about 26 weeks pregnant when she died. Although police suspected foul play, they didn't have much in the way of leads to ID a suspect in her death, and they didn't even know who she was. Efforts to ID her came up empty, and she was laid to rest with the moniker 'Mary Jane Doe'.

In 1998, an unthinkable crime rocked farm community Portageville, Missouri. Sherri Scherer and her 12 year old daughter Megan were shot and killed, and Megan was sexually assaulted, in their own home in a 41 minute window of time. A massive investigation into one of the state’s most heinous crimes ensued. And soon, with the discovery of more and more crimes, the investigation would burgeon into a multi-state investigative effort to catch a killer. Finally, forensic genealogy using DNA collected from an adolescent rape survivor provided answers to the questions that had haunted investigators and families in Missouri, Tennessee, and South Carolina. But many fear that these crimes were just the tip of the iceberg for the monster that was Robert Brashers.