[piano playing]
She was a strong woman.
She had good principles.
She loved her family.
She was outgoing.
She was cheerful.
She was beautiful.
* I am made of dark things *
* Ravagings *
It's hard to have to think back
to the day that we lost her.
-*... Lightning striking * -No other mother
should have to go through this.
And whoever took my beautiful daughter Danyese,
yes, we want them accountable.
***
So this case makes me crazy.
You probably like it, though. Right?
You know, this is one of those cases, like,
when you're a cop, it puts the fear of God
-in your own family and stuff. -No, I know.
Because our victim was
coming home from work at midnight from her shift
-on Easter Sunday night... -Yep.
...and gets snatched out of her car.
Back in 2000, young mother Danyese Laclair
was abducted after making
a late night drop off at the post office.
Her car was found abandoned,
the windows rolled down and the engine running.
Her partially clothed body was found in a field,
shot in the head, execution style.
It's every woman's worst nightmare.
It feels like the thoughts of the family
and the cops were all over the place on who was involved.
I think the family has all looked inward.
They're pointing fingers and it ruined the whole family.
-It did. -It's just sad.
Danyese's murder tore her family apart,
not just because of the grief and the sadness,
but also because some of the family suspected
that her husband was involved.
Though the nature of this crime
opens up a lot of scary possibilities.
Right away when I read this,
the driver's window is halfway down.
I think of one thing, and I don't like saying it,
and either a police impersonator or the police themselves.
Why do you--why-- why do you jump to that?
Because it's just so common.
Even I do it when the cops stop me.
I roll the window halfway down,
and I can just see...
the police department is right next door.
Across the street from the police department.
So all of a sudden, all that stuff starts adding up
and I don't like it.
We know that Danyese's killer had a gun,
but did he also carry a badge?
With a crime like this occurring in a public area
in the middle of the night,
we have to consider a wider range of suspects
than we normally do.
We've got suspects and people
that no one can tell you about when that happened,
these are the things they said or how they acted
that didn't make any sense.
But when you have a stranger
potentially being the killer/abductor,
there's no pieces like that to point at anybody.
It's the kind of case which is a lot harder to do.
-Hello, hello! -Good morning.
-I'm Kelly. -Chief Ross. Brian Ross.
-Nice to meet you, sir. -Kevin Kissel.
Steve Spignola. Nice to meet you, sir.
-Nice to meet you. -Dave Powell.
-Hey, Dave. Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you, ma'am.
Ooh, you got a hard case, sir.
-It is a tough one. -We need, like, a miracle.
We do. We really do. Yeah.
It's an absolutely difficult case.
I go home at night and I think about it constantly.
I think about an 11-year-old boy
and a 3-year-old girl without their mom.
Danyese's murder affected her children,
every one of her loved ones, family and friends.
It affected our community.
For 22 years, we've been asking who's
responsible for her death.
My heart, my soul, my bones,
every bit of me is in this.
Okay, so...
Easter Sunday night, 2000.
So start with the front of the story.
What's your first recollection of how this case becomes
Burton PD's number one unsolved case?
Danyese Laclair left her job at a local hospital
around 11:38 p.m.
Around midnight, her car was spotted at a post office
across the street from the Burton Police Department.
One of our patrol officers saw the red Cavalier
parked at the exit, running.
Driver's door open, window down.
Blinker on, like,
just as she was ready to pull out into traffic,
-something stopped her. -Was her purse in the car?
-Her purse was never located. -What about her cell phone?
Cell phone was plugged in to cigarette lighter.
The officers at that time
treated it as a missing person abduction case.
The original officers had secured the scene,
ran the plate.
Around 02:00 a.m. a police officer was dispatched
to the Laclair home to notify Dan Laclair
that his wife's vehicle had been found abandoned.
And it wasn't till later that morning
that the office down the street opened up and
some of the employees began to notice
some clothing in the back.
And eventually someone walked out there
and observed it to be a body.
She had been disrobed partially.
She was found wearing a trench coat, underwear.
She had been shot through the head one time.
Close range shot.
With what kind of weapon?
9mm. The slug was found in the ground
about six inches into the soil.
To me, the weirdest thing about this whole case
is how she's found clothed.
All she has on is her panties and her trench coat.
So was she sexually assaulted?
There was no evidence or anything definitive to say.
While aspects of this crime look like sexual assault,
Danyese's body showed no signs of sexual trauma
and the rape kit came back inconclusive,
with no semen found and DNA results
that are still unclear.
We're going to retest the evidence
using the most recent DNA techniques
to see if we can find a profile matching the suspect.
The biggest one that they focused on back then
is going to be Danyese's husband, Dan Laclair.
-He's kind of a jerk. -A hothead, too.
He had been in a fight in Oakland County...
-Yes. -...where they--
it was a traffic-- I think, a road rage incident.
-One road rage incident? -Yeah.
And then the headstone issue.
What did he do, kick her picture over?
Yeah, he damaged the headstone
and broke the picture off of the front of it.
-Right. -He was actually charged with
destruction of property.
That was a couple of years later, wasn't it?
MEN: Yes.
Dan Laclair claimed
that he was home with his kids that night,
though the officer who knocked on the door
thought that he acted a little unusual.
His first reaction at, what was it, 1:40 in the morning?
And he goes, "A little late, isn't it?"
Doesn't he also punch the door?
-The wall. -Yes.
It was only later that the investigators
discovered a potential motive for Dan--
Danyese was having an affair with another man.
And though that man was cleared as a suspect,
could that affair have been enough of a motive
to drive Dan to commit murder?
Did he even know about it before her murder?
Y'all think that maybe Dan found out about this affair
when he saw that letter in her car, right?
But the letter in the car, it was returned to him
by you guys, right?
No, it was left in the car.
They didn't mean to give it to him.
They left it in the car and he found it.
Yes, it was inadvertently left behind,
and it was a short handwritten letter
that said, you know, some supportive messages.
Yeah, "Thanks for helping me," and "I love you, too."
And I know the kids were asked
several times over the years,
"Is there more to that night that you don't want to tell us?
Please tell us," and they never have, right?
-Right. -And they believe
their dad didn't do it.
Okay, next on the list, Ralph Vanucci.
How does he get in the middle of our world?
-Ralph worked with Danyese. -He was an x-ray tech.
Yeah, they saw each other on a daily basis.
He goes to make a pass at her, and she turns him down.
-When is that? -About a week before.
-Yeah. -Right.
Ralph Vanucci knew that Danyese was having this affair,
so he made a little pass at her, but she rejected him.
So how upset was he about that?
Could that have caused him to follow her after work one night
and did he kill her over that?
Ralph had a rough background.
He had a son pass away due to a drowning.
And that was just, like, five months earlier.
Yeah, and so that caused a lot of grief,
a lot of stress within the home.
In fact, he was going through a second divorce because of it.
Okay, so unknown suspect. Scary as hell.
Do we agree it's not a robbery?
Well, she's missing her purse.
The purse was never located.
Credit cards were all flagged
-and none were ever used. -But never used.
-Never used. -Okay.
-Where she was abducted... -Where the car was found
is right across the street from the police department.
It's a clear view to the police department,
a 24/7-hour operation.
I suppose there's a possibility
that whoever had done this to Danyese
didn't know it was the police department,
but I really find that hard to believe.
Risky.
What happens at the post office?
Why would she not fight, run, scream?
Why does she give up so voluntarily,
a woman who's taken karate lessons?
Unless you think the guy that's pulling you over...
-Yeah, I mean... -...is a police officer.
Put the windows half down.
And I'm not saying this couldn't be an impersonator
or a security guard who's just driving by, too.
Wouldn't you either be an idiot or super high risk-taking
-to do it right there? -Pretty bold.
Or, if we're walking down that path,
you have a radio, and you can hear everything
and everywhere where everybody's at,
and you know if it's clear or it's not.
The police department has investigated
this idea that Danyese was killed
by someone of authority from the very beginning.
And they went down that road and looked for records and logs
of anybody that could have been involved back then,
but they had no luck.
Whoever committed this crime,
we got our work cut out for us.
All right, get your notes.
Danyese's mom, Dianne Parrish,
when you called her up to tell her you were looking
at the case again, how'd she take it?
She immediately got emotional that we haven't given up yet.
We reached out to Danyese and Dan's children
to talk to us and share their story,
but they didn't want to do that.
After all this time and what they've been through,
I think it's understandable.
Their dad is a suspect,
and throughout all these years, they've always been adamant
that their dad was home with them that night
and could not have killed their mother.
-Hello. How are you? -Hello.
Ms. Dianne? I'm Kelly.
-Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you.
As a mother myself with two young daughters,
Dianne, Danyese's mother,
has lived through the worst thing imaginable--
thinking about her daughter out by herself,
vulnerable, and look what happens.
Worst of all, after 22 years, it's still unsolved.
Sounds like from reading the file,
she was close to her brothers.
She was.
She was my oldest.
So I had the three sons and the one daughter.
She was funky, she had a lot of moxie.
She was a people person, very caring.
Just a beautiful soul.
At that time, were y'all aware of any
strain or issues going on in
Danyese's marriage with Dan?
No.
Danyese probably-- she didn't discuss...
-Right. -those kind of details with me.
Go back 22 years.
Do you remember how you first heard what happened?
I get a call in the morning.
Danyese's car was found at the post office
and she's missing.
So I jumped in a car and went over to Danyese's house.
Dan was out in
the little porch there with the detective.
He said, "Yep, it's her," and he just left.
No emotion. He wasn't acting...
...like a distraught husband would do.
He was very, uh...
arrogant,
very...distant, cold.
Did you ever, in all these years,
ask Dan a hard question about if he hurt your daughter?
No.
Okay.
[sniffles]
But, uh...
It's hard to think back...
and it brings up a lot of questions.
I know they're going to be working on it diligently,
and they have been, to try to give us closure.
And that's what we want the most is closure,
so that we can put our minds to rest,
our hearts to rest.
It's been hard.
I'm sorry for everything you've been through.
***
[line ringing]
Hello?
We were just following up
on the Danyese Laclair murder.
Do you remember that night?
We've got a few theories about
who might have murdered Danyese Laclair
22 years ago.
Her husband Dan, her coworker Ralph,
and an unknown sexual predator.
And we need to track down anyone who might have information.
You were at the post office, correct?
Dropping some mail off?
And you didn't see anybody at that time, correct?
Okay.
While we don't have any more eyewitnesses,
we do have more people from Danyese's world
that can maybe tell us more about her marriage,
her affair, or anything else going on in her world
that might have factored into her murder.
Tell me about Danyese.
-We went to college together. -Okay.
-And we were just best friends. -Okay.
She was in my wedding, everything,
and she stayed at my mom and dad's house with me
a couple of times when her and Dan were fighting.
What did you think of Dan?
I did not like him from the first time I met him.
-Didn't like him. -He just came off as...
Like, an arrogant son of a bitch.
He got very mad very fast.
-Like, just anger issues. -Okay.
Do you remember what the fights were about?
She was really pretty.
She made sure she looked good when she went out,
-and he hated that. -Really?
Yeah, he hated her looking good, like going to college.
-"Why do you gotta-- -Oh.
"Why do you gotta do your face to go to college?"
How would you describe her?
Little bit mousy, low key.
Like, she didn't wear a lot of makeup.
Plain, naturally beautiful. That was her.
So when her and Dan started hanging out,
how would you describe that?
Tumultuous. Like, he was the controller...
-Okay. -and she was submissive.
Was there anything that stood out to you
leading up to her death?
She did confide in me that
she was seeing somebody from the hospital,
and I was like, "Wow, you just dropped a bomb on me.
Like, you're cheating on your husband."
Never gave you an impression she'd be a girl
-like that at all? -No, absolutely not.
How long was that prior to her death?
It was literally days,
maybe the weekend before, two weekends before?
I worked in radiology as well.
How was she at work?
She was very plain, quiet, kept to herself,
and then very modest, conservative with her clothes.
And then some point in time, she started dressing
a little bit more sexier, putting on makeup.
Some of the guys in the office took notice of her.
-Of course. -Okay. Sure.
And, I mean, at the time, we had Ralph Vanucci,
-kind of took interest and... -Okay.
And [bleep] was always kind of a little bit friendly with her.
The man Danyese Laclair was having an affair with
was cleared as a suspect,
but we're not sure if Dan, her husband,
knew about the affair or how he would have reacted
if he had found out about it prior to her death.
The night in particular that she went missing,
we thought she was upset that night.
Her husband had been calling up there,
and he was calling for wanting her to drop off some mail,
and I thought that was kind of strange.
We had a drop box downstairs.
She said, "No, he wants me to drop it off."
I always go back to her husband
because of how the night played out.
Dan would have a pretty good idea when Danyese
was going to be at that post office.
I've gone through an old case,
and it's a reference Danyese Laclair
and Ralph worked with her at McLaren.
Can you tell me what you know about that?
Then again, we know that her coworker, Ralph Vanucci,
had made a pass at her just days before
and could have easily followed her
to the post office that evening.
And he had your daughter at--at his home, right?
Okay. Is there anything about him
that would give you any reason to think
that he could be responsible for something like this?
Okay.
Like Dan, Ralph has always claimed
he was at home that evening with his child
and could not have killed Danyese.
And it's baffling to us that both of our known suspects
with potential motives have an alibi
for the evening that Danyese was killed.
Are these alibis as airtight as they seem?
[line ringing]
Hi, this is Kevin Kissel with the Burton Police Department.
I am still looking at the Danyese Laclair case.
Do you recall that name?
Okay.
And, uh...
***
So Dr. Pinneri is here this morning to talk over
the autopsy and maybe even our sexual assault kit questions.
Dr. Kathryn Pinneri is our forensic pathologist,
and she's here today to talk to us
about the medical examiner's findings
and if they can get us closer to understanding our killer.
The body was found
lying on her left side with the arms bent,
and her hands are clenched in fists near her head,
and she has really long fingernails,
and they're all intact.
You know, if you're fighting somebody back with nails
that long, a lot of times they'll get broken.
So that suggests that there wasn't any sort of
hand interaction with the suspect.
Danyese may have believed
that if she complied with the offender,
she would survive in this attack.
But it does make you wonder
if she knew her attacker, like her husband Dan
or her coworker Ralph,
would she have tried to fight back?
Well, it's very unusual that she's redressed
and kind of right.
In situations where I've seen individuals
be redressed by a suspect,
there's something a little off.
The underwear's on backwards or it's half on,
and with the condition of the clothes,
they're not torn.
I never even thought of that.
How do you not rip them of-- rip them?
It's really hard to dress a dead person.
Or a struggling alive person who's scared to death,
-redressing them, too. -Right.
That really suggests she undressed herself
and looks like she redressed herself.
That sexual assault kit mentions
that there's blue fiber on her vagina.
What's the way that you think there could be blue...
fiber transfer there?
-Cotton from a man's underwear. -Right.
Whether it was, you know,
full sexual intercourse or forced.
So you think they did sexually assault her?
I think that there was sexual interaction
because of the clothing being off and
the blue fiber in the vagina.
This is a hard one.
-Yeah. -This is a confusing one.
Maybe Danyese's attacker
wasn't able to become sexually aroused,
or they got spooked and changed their mind.
But if Danyese was sexually assaulted,
it seems odd that her husband
would really do that in such a risky way.
Not to mention that neither he or Ralph
owned a 9mm handgun.
***
This is just how it was, just like this back then?
No, actually, it was a lot different 20 years ago.
A lot of these trees were smaller.
City Hall across the street
was under construction at the time,
and the post office essentially is exactly the same.
This is a first, because our crime scene
is only a few hundred feet from the police station.
I'm wondering if Danyese's killer
was unaware that it was so close,
or were they just so bold that they didn't even care?
Yeah, so most people would pull in
right off Center Road,
and that blue mailbox is where they would drop off.
Danyese would have pulled in just like we walked just now.
What's interesting about this spot, too, is
if you're sitting right here in the dark,
you have a line of sight to our employee parking lot.
You've got the court, you've got City Hall.
Like, all these places
were dark areas, too, that you could sit.
Or they could have followed her from the hospital
and waited for her to drop her mail off
and then came in behind her.
All right, so Danyese drops her mail off, and then?
She would have drove out to the exit down here.
And the way her car was positioned,
I think someone pulled up and stopped her,
or had pulled up behind her.
The door was open, the window was partially down,
and the blinker was on.
So this car's positioned the way her car was?
-Yeah. -From which direction
do y'all think the guy came up?
I think somebody walks up. The car is right back here.
He just walks to the car and gets in.
Why wouldn't he come from over here?
No, that would have scared her. She'd have taken off.
-She can't take off. -She can take off.
If the car comes up and pulls up right here,
and the guy gets out with a gun
coming up to her, she's not going to even back up.
She ought to reverse, but maybe she panicked.
I just think if he pulls up behind her,
why didn't she just take off?
Because it's an authority figure.
But only your cop theory works from behind, right?
I'm not saying your cop theory doesn't work,
but if it's some other creepy guy,
you wouldn't come up from behind.
Okay, so how fast is this going to happen?
I'm up to your car in seconds
and I can say, "Get out of the car
and come back here with me now."
Grab your purse from you so maybe if you're carrying
-a pepper spray or a weapon. -Right.
-That's less than 15 seconds. -Yeah.
-You're in and you're out. -You're in and you're out.
Which way is the doctor's office from here?
It's, um, north, about a third of a mile up the road.
The field where Danyese's body was found
was roughly a half a mile away
and right off the main road.
It only takes a minute to make that drive,
but I bet you to Danyese, that felt like a lifetime.
So this is our doctor's office?
-Correct. -And back then,
you could pull in and not be seen.
You would be hidden from anybody passing by on Center Road.
So are y'all thinking the sexual assault happened in a car,
or out here in the yard somewhere
With the grass on her, it makes me think they were
in the grassy area here.
So the car pulls up, then.
He or they are going to have to get her out at gunpoint.
-And she's got her clothes off? -Correct.
The clothes could still be in the car for all we know.
I think whatever took place was generally
in this area with her.
So you think the sexual assault starts here, up here?
-I believe so. -I think so.
And then she gets her trench coat back
and it's tied back on her,
along with her panties.
And then she's going to be headed that way?
-Yep. -Mm-hmm.
But I don't think she was awake
when she made it back here.
What, you think she's out now and she's being carried?
I think she was rendered unconscious back there
and I think she was brought out here
and you see tall grass, trees, and brush,
and I'm tired, that might be where I place her.
At the time, in 2000, this wasn't here
and none of that apartment building was here,
and it was all overgrown in that brush.
She's found in this general area,
her body on her left side pointing in that direction.
She's plopped down on the ground.
And then what happens?
To me and the angles in the head wound,
-you'd have to come around and-- -To the front of her.
-To the front of her? -And that gives you the angle
from front to back and you fire that shot right there.
The gun was placed to her head because
of the burn marks and the damage to her scalp,
and that's where she stays.
-Mm-hmm. -I agree with you there.
You know, the bullet's in the ground
underneath of her head.
That casing is coming out to the back...
-Plops out. -and it's in the brushy pile.
I mean, you're done. The deed is done.
And the car is still sitting over there,
so he just takes the clothes and just goes and...
Dumps them out of his car.
And the way they're piled up, there was a collection.
And where was the ring compared to the clothes?
-Underneath all the clothes? -In the collection, yeah.
That dang ring, man's ring.
That's the mystery.
Most of Danyese's clothes were left in a pile
next to a mysterious gold ring.
The ring was tested and contained DNA
belonging to an unknown contributor.
But the DNA didn't match Dan or Ralph
or the man Danyese was having the affair with.
Unfortunately, the sample swab was used up during testing.
The ring has since been contaminated
and no further testing can be done on the ring.
That's why our hopes are on getting
a new DNA profile off of Danyese's clothes.
How do you get the ring in the same spot
as the clothes if it's a coincidence?
Very unlikely.
Now, whether or not it was on the bad guy
and when he dumped it, it came off,
or whether there was something more personal to it.
We're all speculating upon what happened here.
I just get a strange feeling, I hate to say this,
that she was basically just a target of opportunity
when she was taken.
So she's obeying what this guy says,
hoping that she gets away or
he's going to let her go, but it's not going to happen.
You know, you get a true whodunnit
with a true predator that's walking around.
But who doesn't drop off letters at a mailbox?
How is that high risk? Now she's dead.
You got somebody out that just hunts people.
Who does it in front of a police department?
Remember this, Kelly--a lion hunts in his own backyard.
Yeah.
***
You want to call Intermountain Lab
and see what Danny has to say?
Love to hear what he has to say.
The investigators on Danyese Laclair's case
originally tested her rape kit,
that mysterious gold ring and her clothing,
but didn't have any luck identifying her killer.
- Hello, this is Danny. -Hi, Danny.
This is Kevin Kissel with the Burton Police Department.
I'm dying to hear what kind of results
you have from the stuff we sent out to you.
But DNA technology has advanced in the last 20 years,
so we've resent some of our evidence
off to Intermountain Forensics,
hoping they can retest everything
with the latest DNA technology.
They should have our preliminary results.
In so many of our cases, there's not even enough
to get a DNA profile, so this is great.
If the DNA on her panties comes back to her husband,
that might not be as compelling,
it might be more easily explained.
But if it comes back to anybody else,
that could very well be our killer.
How fast can we call you back for the next update?
-Here we are. -Maybe we get lucky.
-That would be awesome. -Man!
This would be a miracle.
***
You're ready for me to dial him up?
Let's go. Let's see what we got.
It's time we talked to our suspect, Ralph Vanucci.
He was Danyese's coworker and made a pass at Danyese
days before the murder, which she rejected.
Hello?
Hi, this is Detective Sergeant Dave Powell,
and we're looking into the Danyese Laclair homicide,
and we're just kind of going back just to see
if there was anything that sticks out in your mind
that we should probably look over again.
Do you remember Danyese at all?
Did she ever flirt with you?
Did you ever try to kiss her?
What happened?
Were you guys okay after that?
I mean, everything seemed to go on as normal?
Do you know how she was killed, sir?
Let me just ask you this, Mr. Vanucci.
Did you kill Danyese?
***
Ralph seems fairly forthcoming
and owns up to the failed pass
he made at Danyese days before her murder.
Not to mention that he's always had an alibi in this case
and that he got a key detail in this murder wrong.
I don't have anything else. Mr. Vanucci.
-I appreciate your time. -Be safe.
-You, too. -Take care.
Ralph actually thought that Danyese was shot
in her truck, but she was actually
driving her husband's car that evening.
You would think that if he did actually murder Danyese,
he would remember what she was driving.
My Spidey sense doesn't tingle with him at all.
-No. -I think he's pretty honest.
I just don't see, the way this happened, that he's involved.
***
Dan Laclair. Let's do this.
Dan Laclair.
It's been 22 years since Danyese Laclair
was seemingly pulled out of her car at gunpoint,
assaulted and shot to death in a field.
-And since the beginning, - [line ringing]
the prime suspect has been her husband, Dan.
Dan was allegedly home with their children
that night, but she was cheating on him,
and he acted strangely after her death,
including kicking her headstone.
-Hello? -Hi, Dan.
This is Kevin Kissel with the Burton Police Department.
-Yeah. -I'm going over
your wife's case.
You think you'd be able to stop by my office here?
-Perfect. Thank you, sir. -Yeah.
All right. Bye bye.
-All right. -Great.
Dan agreed to come in. I'm pretty surprised
because he's had fingers pointed at him for 22 years,
and he's coming anyway.
I'm just hoping that we can clear up
once and for all whether he's involved.
Well, come on back in here.
We can have a private spot to chat.
I do appreciate you coming in.
So the kids don't want me here now,
but I'd like to help close this up,
and I'm not worried about any...
You know, like you said, there's been fingers pointed
for a lot of ways, so people's opinions of me,
I really don't give a-- much about.
His kids didn't want him to come,
but he came anyway.
He's like, "I'm here. Give me your questions."
I would love to hear your version from you, Dan,
from your relationship with your wife
till the events of that night.
You know, she had just graduated and
was increasing her wage quite a bit.
-Okay. -And working at the hospital
around a different class of people.
-Right. -She was acting kind of weird
in the way women will sometimes,
kind of move on and move up the ladder in a little bit.
I guess that's what she was doing.
She was somebody else to me.
She wasn't living two lives. To me she was something else.
-And that's heartbreaking. -Yeah, I mean--
this is not-- I'm not the only one.
That happens to a lot of guys.
It won't be the first, won't be the last.
But, you know, finding out after she's dead like that,
-that is a little different. -It's a hidden truck, right?
He's still pissed about the affair, I think.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, he's-- he's very mad.
That day was--it was Easter,
so she went to work for an afternoon shift.
Yeah. Think she was avoiding me, doing that stuff...
-You think so? -we talked about earlier.
Yeah. Think she was working second shift
just to stay the hell away from me.
Okay. So you're starting to, like, kind of
-put some pieces together. -25 years later.
You ever start to put some [bleep] together?
But at the time, no.
So, you know her car was at the post office,
it was running, and the door was open.
Knowing her as well as you do, what would you think happened?
Is there anything about it
got you thinking about her again that changed your--
Just being yanked out of a car for no reason.
Just disappeared, you know, like you said.
That's the part I don't understand.
Why would that car be running? Why wouldn't she call?
Why wouldn't she drive away if somebody--
And so that makes me think it's somebody she knew.
But I don't think I completely realized
how very, very serious it was,
standing out there in shock, and not really sure
-what the hell was going on. -Sure.
I was still failing to accept reality.
And then the people that were looking at me
like I was a guilty piece of [bleep], in hindsight,
were the ones who knew Danyese was running around.
Goddamn.
And when did I accept what went on?
Probably about the time I kicked her headstone.
Can you tell me the story around that and why that was?
I then go on to her cemetery plot quite often.
I just had me a bad moment at that time
and having to accept everything
and that she wasn't what I thought she was
and I kicked her headstone and broke a picture.
Well, it got some attention, that's for sure.
Kind of weird that that made the front page.
Dan still seems genuinely upset and hurt by Danyese's affair.
However, he is not ashamed or afraid to talk about it.
I can't tell you how many cheated-on husbands
I've talked to that try to play it off
like they actually don't care, trying to downplay their motive.
Dan is not doing that.
I'm listening to you, and I understand.
I can see, looking at your eyes, you're hurt.
But, you know, I want you to know something.
This wasn't some big love affair she had.
This was unbelievably tragic thing that happened
to you and your whole family.
I appreciate the kind thoughts and everything, but...
that's--that's-- that's where we need to be.
You guys just take care of handling this case
and get her solved and a trial for her
and that--that, you know, we'll all be good with that.
After speaking to him,
there's no way he's a suspect in this case.
The timeline doesn't fit.
He's cooperated with law enforcement, and granted,
he's a little bit of a quirky personality,
but when you understand what he was going through
and just the frustration of losing your wife
and then finding out she was having this affair
and he's had to live with all of that.
Dan, I got a lot of empathy for.
It's been a rough bunch of years for that man...
-Yep. -and that man's family.
I think you could see it pretty obvious in his face.
I'm confident after talking with him,
you know, I don't believe he's responsible.
At this point, it feels
more and more like Danyese was murdered
by an unknown suspect, which is horrible news unless
our DNA results can come back with some great new information.
***
[line ringing]
Hey, Danny. It's Kevin Kissel.
Do you have any new news for us this morning?
So the way to work with it, then, Danny,
is they would have to find samples
to compare it to directly, one to one.
This is good news because we now,
for the very first time, have a Y-STR profile--
that means it belongs to a male--that we can work with.
It's not viable for comparison to CODIS,
or with genealogy databases.
But if anybody comes forward with information
in the future about a viable suspect,
investigators can test with near certainty
if that suspect is on Danyese's panties.
You got your killer, but you can't figure out who it is.
Yeah.
I can put out a bulletin to our local agencies--
"Do you have any unsolved, open
"sex assault cases where you have
a Y-STR result that they got?"
***
Good morning, boys.
-Good morning. -Good morning.
We've definitely made some progress in Danyese's case.
And even though it might not be
as much progress as we would've liked,
we can put some decade-old suspicions to rest.
So Ralph Vanucci
was initially involved in this because of
the rumors at the hospital that Ralph tried to kiss her.
And then when she rejected him,
did it make him mad enough to cause a murder to happen?
But y'all asked him about that specifically, right?
He said, "I reached over and kissed her on the cheek
"and she turned me down, and I apologized,
-and I'm embarrassed by that." -He owned it.
I don't think he lied about one thing.
No. And he said that afterwards
they were able to get along
and work together just fine.
Even back then, he was alibied out by his daughter.
So does everybody agree we can clear out Ralph Vanucci?
Yes.
So the real question, for the last 22 years,
Danyese's husband, Dan Laclair.
Dan's a logical answer, right?
She's having a relationship outside of their marriage.
So you're going to look at him. You have to.
And so now, sitting here today, 22 years later...
He showed up. He wasn't scared to be here.
It's because Dan wants the same thing we all want--answers.
Yeah, I don't think Dan had anything to do
with the death of his wife.
You know, Dan's the second victim of this homicide.
He had to raise those two kids by himself.
There's no way in my heart of hearts
I believe that he killed his wife.
I feel good taking him off the board, right?
Yes, ma'am.
Dan has always been cooperative.
He also had an alibi,
and we all believe that he was completely unaware
of his wife's affair until after she was dead,
which means he never had a motive.
And while it feels really good to clear
Dan's name once and for all,
it's also very frustrating to admit
that we still have no idea who killed Danyese.
So when you're looking for our unknown suspect,
what are the clues that are going to help you
try and narrow this down?
You got a car parked almost to the exit,
running, windows down, blinkers on.
You see that at traffic stops.
Is it somebody who approached her
from a position of authority?
A security guard? A cop?
But I still think a guy coming up to you
and startling you, just putting a gun in your face,
even in civilian clothes, could also do it.
I'm not completely throwing out
that it's just a guy with a gun
that's a crazy-ass, sorry sicko, too.
-Yes, ma'am. -Yeah.
So we didn't get there, and, um,
you know how mad we are about it.
But now, the real big new thing.
You have a complete Y-STR profile
that you can use forever
to compare against the male suspect world and family
of anybody you want to.
Now you got something new to play with,
to test against, because it came from the best place
it could have come-- her panties.
-Yes, ma'am. -I wish we could've gotten
all the way to the end, but
we couldn't leave it in better hands.
Might take a while, but we're going to find it.
***
Now you're fixin' to go talk to Dianne.
Danyese's mom, about everything.
What are you thinking about what you're going to say to her?
I'm going to explain to her.
I know the family pointed the finger at Dan quite a bit,
and I don't believe
he's responsible for her daughter's death.
Maybe that'll give her some peace, right?
I hope so.
***
Good morning, Ms. Dianne.
***
* Here's someone that's close by *
Well, it's been a long week.
We've dove into this case.
We've used every resource that we can.
Last night, I had the opportunity to talk to Dan.
After talking with him,
I'm confident that Dan didn't have anything to do
with your daughter's death.
That makes me feel a little easier.
It's been hard with all the uncertainty.
I know. I know.
Maybe your family can get back together again
and everybody can get along a little better.
-I hope we put them at ease. -Yes. Yes.
I feel relief that people are being eliminated.
I feel like some of the weight has been lifted
and we can come together on this
and do the justice that she needs.
That's what we want.
I don't know who did it yet,
but we were able to get a Y-STR DNA sample.
Now, when I find a suspect, I can match that up
and I can confirm if that person did or did not do it.
I'm not going to stop until we find this guy.
That's what I want.
I went closure.
-She's your baby, -Yes, she was.
And you want justice.
-You want to find who did it. -Justice, right.
Well, you couldn't have a better man on your side than him.
-Okay. -It was wonderful meeting you.
We've never had a case just like this before.
The good news is this case can still be solved.
-Thank you so much. -Yes, ma'am.
If you have any information about who is responsible
for the murder of Danyese Laclair on April 24,
someone who lived in, worked in,
or frequented the Burton, Michigan area,
who may have been a person of authority, a security guard,
or worked around law enforcement,
wore or owned a gold ring
like the one found near her body,
and had access to a 9mm firearm,
please contact the Burton Police Department.
They likely have her killer's DNA.
What they don't have is his name.
***