Page 21 - Robert Beatty News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Spotlight. and so around thanksgiving, 2006, 12 years after the murder when trooper hunyor answered the phone one day -- >> couldn't believe it. the director of the state crime lab contacted me and said that they just got information that there was a match through the codis system for the sample on bonnie craig. >> reporter: they got him. or the system did. codis is short for combined dna index system. a system provided by federal, state and local crime labs. and codis got a hit. >> everybody was happy. >> reporter: the match was in new hampshire of all places. a man in prison for armed robber...

Protestations are sincere in that he had an episode in his life that he's either blocked out or for some reason can't recall based on what was happening in his life at that time. >> reporter: cocaine puts holes in your brain, they say. >> it does. >> reporter: amazing, this is a man who got away with murder for a long time and would have completely, scot free if it hadn't been somebody put the dna into codis. >> that's really remarkable. >> reporter: which is, it turns out, the subject of karen's new campaign. she is now on the side of the alaska state troopers and other law enforcement agenci...

But they eventually let her see the autopsy report. that's when karen saw a dozen or so brutal head wound. that's also when the medical examiner told her about one extremely important piece of news, horrifying, but potentially useful. bonnie had been raped as well. and as awful as that was, it left one sliver of hope. the killer left behind his dna. match it and they'd solve the case. so who was it? it couldn't have been the boyfriend, cameron. >> he was down in california going to college. >> reporter: troopers said they looked at karen's work as a undercover police officer and determined tha...

He was a married man with a newborn, a cocaine problem and a vastly different life. >> they came from two completely different worlds, and there was no reason for the two of them to have mixed together. >> reporter: anyway, said the prosecutors, there was physical evidence of rape. her pants were smeared with grass stains. one of the buttons was undone. she didn't drive. and the place she was killed was miles away. someone must have taken her there. there, where investigators found that one telling drop of blood on the leaf near the top of the cliff. >> is what really showed that she was injur...

Didn't remember doing it? >> i struggle with that. is it possible that his protestations are sincere in that he had an episode in his life that he's either blocked out or for some reason can't recall based on what was happening in his life at that time. >> reporter: cocaine puts holes in your brain, they say. >> it does. >> reporter: amazing, this is a man who got away with murder for a long time and would have completely, scott-free if it hadn't been somebody put the dna into codis. >> that's really remarkable. >> reporter: which is, it turns out, the subject of karen's new campaign at the ti...