Page 26 - Robert Beatty News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Dna samples. and nothing came of it but frustration. the case grew cold, as cold as some of the winter nights up here. and four years became six, eight, ten. the case faded from the public 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 sys...

Case. is it possible he actually 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, 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 o...

The others saw the evidence and thought murder. one trooper at the crime scene was tim, now retired. >> we died find one drop of blood on a leaf at the top of the cliff. >> which was found by this man trooper robert beatty. >> i was on my hands and knees looking and i came across that drop of blood. >> we got blood up here. did he tell you that? >> how big was this drop? >> about the size of a razor head really. the interesting part about that was that it was a drop that had fallen straight down. >> indicating to the troopers that she'd been hurt somehow before she got anywhere near the edge o...

>> and i remember that being a really unsure, scary feeling. in my mind it didn't make sense. my dad is not and never has been a violent man. so i remember just straight up asking him, dad, did you kill bonnie? >> reporter: do you remember the look on his face when you asked him? >> he was devastated. he was completely devastated. but i just needed to hear it from him because there was so much uncertainty in my life at that point. there was so much confusion that to be able to have him tell me when he was tucking me in bed was all i needed. >> reporter: the dna spoke, too. he was eliminated. b...

Was tim hunier, now retired. >> one thing strange to us, we did find one drop of blood on a leaf at the top of the cliff. >> reporter: one drop of blood. >> one drop of blood. >> reporter: which was found by this man, trooper robert beatty, also now retired. >> i was on my hands and knees and was looking and came across that drop of blood. >> reporter: how big was this drop? >> about the size of an eraser head really. the interesting part about that was that it was a drop that had fallen straight down. >> reporter: indicating to the troopers that she'd been hurt somehow before she got anywhere...