journalism and became a police officer. the first cold case he was assigned was laura salmon's murder. >> i didn't become a law enforcement officer to work on this case, but it was always on my mind. so i was quite happy that i got to assist bill sharp on this case. >> one of the first things dan goodwin and bill sharp did was to send all of the evidence to the forensic lab for testing. >> obviously, through the advancement in science, through dna testing, that maybe we could find the donor of the biological material and match that with our killer. >> while dna testing was under way, sharp and goodwin pursued a new lead which supposedly came from a local high school student, now almost 16 years after laura's murder. >> in 2000, a student at oakland high school was overheard