- [Narrator] Friday the 25th of June, 1982,
a young woman fails to show up for work
and her lifeless body is discovered in her hotel room.
- She's about to start a new job as food services director
at a hospital in Council Bluffs.
- Lee died from a single knife wound to the heart,
inflicted from the front, and may have been dead up
to 12 hours before her body was discovered.
- [Narrator] The motels proximity
to two busy interstate highways presented a problem
for investigators.
- By the time the officer showed up on the scene,
the suspect could have been theoretically anywhere
on the country by that point.
- More than two weeks after the murder,
police still have no motive, no witnesses and no suspects.
- [Narrator] The Rotatori murder case was growing colder
by the day.
- Our goal is to try to bring justice
to the loved ones of this victim.
- [Narrator] It would be another unsolved murder,
1550 miles away that would hold
the key almost 40 years later to discovering
who killed Lee Rotatori.
- The unsolved ones, we have to stand up.
- And approach these cases in a way outside the box.
- Let the world know is those out there
that did commit a murder, there are people
that are coming after you.
- There's just a lot of good people trying to do
the right thing.
- Because it's something
that you have to be passionate about.
- Solve this and bring some peace to the family,
at least just doing my job.
- [Narrator] When Lee Rotatori fails to show up
for work on Friday, June 25th, 1982, her employer calls
the front desk of the motel that she's staying at.
- She's about to start a new job
as food services director at a hospital in Council Bluffs,
a city on the banks of the Missouri River.
- Lee just arrived from Michigan and checks into the motel.
This is prior to beginning a week of orientation
at the hospital.
- [Narrator] But sometime in the early hours of Friday,
June 25th, (camera shuttering) 32 year old, Lee Rotatori
is stabbed to death in her motel room.
Police are alerted after her body is discovered
by motel staff at 12:27 p.m.
The police have no murder weapon and no suspects.
By the time Lee's body was found,
the killer could have been a thousand miles away.
- The interstate system literally runs right past
the hotel where this took place.
So by the time the officer showed up on the scene,
the suspect could have been theoretically anywhere
in the country by that point, so your suspect pool
is pretty broad at the time.
- [Narrator] Three weeks earlier, Lee visits Council Bluffs
for a look around.
She likes what she sees and decides to accept the post
of food service director at Jennie Edmundson Hospital.
- She had come here approximately a week before to start
the new job.
Her husband stayed behind in Michigan
to tidy up some loose ends.
They were working on transporting their mobile home
from Michigan to Council Bluffs.
- [Narrator] Lee begins her orientation training
at Jenny Edmundson Hospital on Monday, June 21st.
On Thursday the 24th,
she's invited by some of her new colleagues
to spend a few hours boating on Lake Manawa
in the southern part of the city.
The group disperses a dusk.
It's close to the longest day of the year,
so sunset is relatively late in the evening.
- On the way back to the motel,
Lee stops at Manawa McDonald's and picks up food
to take back to her room.
As it turns out, the employees at the restaurant
are probably the last ones to see her alive.
- [Narrator] Council Bluffs police captain, Eldon Jones,
head of the Criminal Investigation Unit states
that Lee's body was found on the bed,
face up and dressed in sleepwear.
She was registered alone at the motel,
her car was in the motels parking lot.
- Lee died from a single knife wound to the heart,
inflicted from the front, and may have been dead up
to 12 hours before her body was discovered.
- The county medical examiner says,
the murder could have been sexually motivated,
but Captain Jones says there's no evidence
to point to that and a further autopsy will be needed.
- [Narrator] In fact, the police were sitting on substantial
evidence that supported the medical examiner's remark.
- Her hands had been bound behind her back,
adhesive residue had been found on her eyes
and mouths indicating they had been taped.
There was evidence she had been sexually assaulted.
- The police have had good reason
for not wanting to disclose a sexual assault,
but it also could have just been the practice of the times.
40 years ago, things were not disclosed to the degree
that they are today.
Back then, there was a sense
that keeping certain details out of the news would spare
the family some anguish.
- [Narrator] Although Lee's room had not been overturned,
there were some items missing.
- The officers at the time didn't know what was missing
from the room, but after interviewing with Lee's husband,
he reported that her wedding ring, engagement ring,
there was a sapphire ring, her watch,
including some credit cards were all missing from the room.
Was that the intention of the person
that came into her room,
was it to rob her and steal her bag,
or was it something else?
And in looking over all of the evidence,
to me it appears more that the theft of the items were more
of an afterthought or a smoke screen to maybe try
to cover up what was really going on there.
- [Narrator] On Tuesday, June 29th,
the Michigan State Police in Grand Haven joined
the investigation into Lee's death
and begin checking into her background.
- Lee joined Service Master in 1980
when her first assignment was a hospital in Michigan.
They would later place her at Jennie Edmundson Hospital
in Council Bluffs.
- [Narrator] At the age of 21, while still an undergraduate,
Lee marries Anthony Rotatori on November 14th, 1970
in Olmsted, Minnesota.
They have a son, Michael.
- Throughout the 70's, Lee works in Wisconsin
as a dietician, she later gets her master's degree
at the University of Wisconsin Monomoy.
- [Narrator] But the Rotatori's marriage ends September,
1977 when Lee and Anthony divorced in Rockford, Illinois.
A little less than a year later on August 15th, 1978,
Lee marries Jerry Nemke in Madison, Wisconsin.
- Jerry Stanley Nemke and Lee marry in 1978,
they divorced the next year and then remarry in 1981.
She keeps her maiden name Rotatori
for professional reasons, and for her son who lives
with his father in Chicago.
- [Narrator] In October of 1980 when Lee
is working at Hackley Hospital in nearby Muskegon,
she and Jerry move into a mobile home in Crockery Estates,
a mobile home park in Nunica.
- It was a happy time for Lee, she owned a horse
which she stabled with friends nearby.
- [Narrator] Lee had a dog there and owned a couple of pigs,
some turkeys and chickens, and also had a part of the garden
at their farm.
- In June of 1982 when Lee takes the job in Council Bluffs,
the plan is for Jerry to pull up stakes in Nunica
and move the mobile home 600 miles west to Iowa.
- [Narrator] On Friday, July 1st, Lee's family holds
a memorial for her in Rochester, Minnesota
where Lee's younger sister Ann was still living.
On July 2nd, authorities announce a $2,000 reward
for information leading to the arrest and indictment
of the person or persons responsible
for the murder of Lee Rotatori.
By the 4th of July it totals $3,000,
but still hadn't led to a suspect or motive.
- This could be very useful to an investigation,
making an appeal to the public by offering a reward opens
the possibility that someone may come forward
with information.
- Generally, in a case like this,
you always try to look at family first,
friends and associates after that and then you start looking
for unknowns or outside your scope of friends group
for potential suspects.
Well, Lee came here from Michigan,
she had only been here a week, she didn't have family here,
she didn't have really friends here,
she just had met a couple of coworkers
that she had been spending a little bit of time with,
so the suspect pool was ginormous.
- More than two weeks after the murder,
police still have no motive, no witnesses, and no suspects.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Shortly after arriving in Council Bluffs, Iowa
to start a new job, 32 year old Lee Rotatori
is discovered dead in her motel room.
Detectives find no weapon at the scene.
The room is orderly with no sign of a struggle,
no evidence of a forced entry
and with no evidence of a robbery, the police are perplexed.
- Lee was not a victim of circumstance,
I mean this wasn't just something that happened,
a robbery gone bad and that she was killed because of that.
To me, the evidence more points to this was planned,
not only planned, but well planned.
So it's not like somebody came in and broke the door down
and forced his way into the room.
Lee was tied up, her arms were bound behind her back,
her mouth was taped and her eyes were taped,
she was sexually assaulted and then murdered.
It was a well placed one stab wound directly to the heart
through two chambers of her heart.
The subject then took the time to remove
the ligatures around her wrist,
removed the tape from her mouth,
remove the tape from her eyes, collect the knife.
He took all the evidence with him.
The suspect came with everything he needed to commit
the crime of murder and he left with everything
that he used to commit the crime of murder.
- During the postmortem, a sexual assault kit was done.
The use of DNA in criminal cases was brand new at the time.
Police realized they were in possession
of critical evidence, but the technology around analyzing
it just wasn't there yet.
- That was the key to everything, without the DNA
that was collected at that time during the autopsy,
this case would still be cold today.
- [Narrator] A little less than three months
before Lee's death, there had been another fatal stabbing
of a young woman in Council Bluffs.
In the early hours on the morning of April 9th,
21 year old Linda Mayfield was stabbed to death
in the parking lot of the Starlight Motel
at 3320 West Broadway.
- The area tracks people from across the river after
the bars in Omaha closed for the night.
- Linda Mayfield suffered several stab wounds to her face,
chest, stomach, hand and foot.
She died shortly after an ambulance took her
to Mercy Hospital.
- By the end of the year, Linda Mayfield
and Lee Rotatori's homicides are still unsolved.
Two of three unsolved murders in Council Bluffs in 1982,
a place where police prided themselves
on clearing their crimes.
- [Narrator] Council Bluffs police Chief Eldon Jones
is still hopeful eight months after Mayfield's murder,
that the police will catch a killer.
He's not as optimistic about the Rotatori case.
Katie Pattee is the crime lab manager and property manager
for the Council Bluffs Police Department.
- We service the community in Council Bluffs,
and sometimes we do assist surrounding agencies.
We work anything from small crimes like burglaries,
criminal mischief, property damage, accidents,
all the way up to obviously cases like homicides,
cold cases, crimes against person, things like that.
To my knowledge, we have all of the evidence
that was collected back then,
we have a lot of her clothing and things like that.
She'd been staying in the hotel for a little while,
so we have all of that stuff too.
(camera shuttering)
We did have some fingerprints
that were lifted from the scene.
As much as we talk about advancements in technology,
law enforcement has always been an innovative field.
And while a lot of things have changed,
I think a lot of things have been similar
and stayed the same, but those guys did a great job
in their processing, in their documentation of the scene,
evidence collection.
- [Narrator] On the floor, there is green foam,
the kind that a florist would use.
- Kind of like when you walked in...
Almost in the walkway, the entryway to the room,
it's like hundreds of little bitty pieces,
look like the foam that you stick flowers in
when you receive a flower delivery.
So that's definitely interesting,
I've never been to a scene where I've found floral foam,
just an odd piece of evidence for sure.
- [Narrator] The green foam was also found
in the upstairs hallway.
- Almost every case we work, we have video,
video surveillance of some sort, but in the 80's,
that wasn't a key piece of evidence.
But now for sure, we would've shown this guy walking down
the hallway and walking into a room or dropping floral foam,
or gotten a license plate off of a vehicle
in the parking lot and that technology just wasn't available
back then.
So, maybe back then if we had had that,
they would've caught him right away,
but that just didn't happen, so.
- [Narrator] The Rotatori murder case was growing colder
by the day.
Four months after Lee Rotatori
is murdered in a Council Bluffs motel room,
the decomposing body of a man is found
in an isolated wooded area, 550 miles away.
But it will be four decades until investigators are able
to uncover the connection between them.
(intense music)
On June 25th, 1982, 32 year old Lee Rotatori is stabbed
to death in a motel room in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Police have no suspects, no witnesses,
no motive in the murder of the young nutritionists
who had arrived from Michigan a week earlier
to take up a new post at Jenny Edmundson Hospital.
The motels proximity to two busy interstate highways
presented a problem for investigators
since the killer could have long been gone
by the time police arrived at the scene.
Lee's husband remained at their home in Nunica while she got
her feet on the ground in Council Bluffs.
Lee had married Jerry Nemke in 1978,
they divorced the following year
and then remarried at the end of 1981.
- But Jerry Nemke had a past
In May, 1960 when he was 17 years old, Nemke was picked up
in Chicago by police for questioning in the slain
of three Chicago area women and the fatal beating
of a young Chicago waitress by the name of Marilyn Duncan
On April 29th.
- He was a fugitive from a youth camp
and was driving a stolen car when he met Duncan,
and reportedly went out on a date that night.
- [Narrator] Nemke was accused
of bludgeoning her before leaving her bleeding
and unconscious behind a Chicago factory,
she died two days later.
Could he be responsible for Lee's death?
- She's raped and then beaten to death
which heightens your sense of, oh my God,
what are the odds of that to begin with.
- [Narrator] But Lee's husband was a long way away
on the night of her murder.
- He was a 10 hour drive away.
In reading through the reports,
his alibi was rock solid.
- [Narrator] Nemke had been sentenced to death
for the murder of Marilyn Duncan,
but less than two years later in January, 1962,
the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the conviction
on the grounds the preliminary hearing
had not been properly conducted.
- There's a second trial, he's found guilty again
and sentenced to 75 years in prison,
but then he is released in 1978,
and he attends Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
- [Narrator] Nemke's violent past remains a flag
for Steve Andrews.
Four months after Lee Rotatori's death,
another grizzly murder is in the news.
On October 30th, human remains are found in a shallow grave,
in an isolated wooded area outside Cobden, Illinois,
it takes two weeks to identify the body.
Thomas Freeman had been shot four times in the chest
sometime during July or August.
- Four months outdoors in the summer heat would make
the victim's body in an advanced state of decomposition,
making identification difficult.
Dental records are typically the place
to start if there is no identification found
with the remains.
- [Narrator] 35 Year old Freeman was from West Frankfurt
in southern Illinois.
He was believed
to be a transient living in different locations.
As with Lee's case, police are stymied as to the motive
for his murder and have no suspects.
It's now 2001 investigators decide to resubmit DNA taken
into evidence from Lee's postmortem
to the State of Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Lab
for forensic analysis.
But when the DNA profile was entered into state
and federal databases no matches were returned.
It would be periodically rechecked through the years 2001
through 2011, but without any results.
In 2011, detective Steve Andrews is assigned to Lee's case.
- My sergeant came to me one day
and plopped these case files on my desk
and said, hey, you're kind of a go-getter,
why don't you look into this and see what you can do.
There's been some advances in DNA
and I know there's some DNA involved in this case,
why don't you see what you can do with this.
It's overwhelming quite frankly when you first get this pile
of paperwork and boxes and reports basically dumped on you.
I just started reading,
I started at the front of the case file
and I started reading all the cases,
started reading all the reports.
I started reading about what all the other previous
detectives have done in the case, just to get familiar
with the time, and the facts, and the dates and the names,
and all the effort that went into the case back then.
- [Narrator] In 2018, council Bluffs crime lab manager,
Katie Pattee joins Steve Andrews on the Rotatori case.
- DNA's come a long, long ways in the last even five years,
but especially in the last 40 years.
We knew that we had a male DNA profile
from the sexual assault kit.
That profile still had not been identified despite the fact
that it had been entered into the state criminal justice
system with which would search against convicted offenders.
So we wanted to research and try another route
if we could try to identify this unknown male.
- [Narrator] The same year Katie joins the Team,
Council Bluffs police Captain, Todd Weddum sees a television
program about the Golden State Killer.
- Joseph DeAngelo Jr. committed a string of murders
and other crimes in California between 1973 and 1986,
and it was eventually brought down
with the aid of forensic genealogy.
- And we started talking about it and he's like,
hey, if they can do that, we can do it, right?
And I'm like, absolutely, this is a perfect case for that.
- [Narrator] In April of 2019, Katie sends a DNA sample
to Parabon NanoLabs, the company based in Reston, Virginia
that works with law enforcement on DNA forensics
and on technologies for the medical industry.
- When the captain released the funding
to send our sample in to get started on this,
again that jumpstarted the whole investigation
and literally that's when this investigation took off.
- Parabon concludes Lee's killer is a male
of Northern European descent.
In other words, a very large pool.
- [Narrator] The lab compares that profile against DNA
that has been submitted to family tree companies
like ancestry.com and 23andMe
in which the clients allow law enforcement
to review their DNA profiles.
- And then they get a match,
but it's with a sixth to an eighth cousin
which leads Parabon to tell investigators their chances
of finding a suspect are slim to none.
- I was like, okay so we have a chance not a good chance,
we have a slim chance, but at least we have a chance.
- [Narrator] Parabon reassures the investigators
that people submit new kits every day.
It's possible one just might eventually come in
that will move things forward.
For Council Bluffs investigators, it becomes a waiting game.
- There wasn't a lot we could do there for a while,
it was just waiting for that right person
to submit their known DNA profile.
We contacted several people that we wanted them to submit
because we thought that maybe they would be somehow related
or involved.
A lot of it was just a waiting game
which is also difficult, you know you've put all this time
into it and you're hoping that when you submit it,
a week later you'll get a phone call
and like, hey, we know who it is.
But that wasn't the case, it definitely took months
to get to the point where we actually were able
to figure out who it was.
- [Narrator] Then in March, 2020, police captain Todd Weddum
opens the email that will change everything.
It's from a 20 year old college student in Pennsylvania
who is an interest in genealogy.
Could he be key to help solve this cold case
and bring justice to the murder of Lee Rotatori?
(intense music)
Council Bluffs Police turn to a new company in 2019, hoping
the latest in DNA forensic techniques might help them
identify Lee Rotatori's killer.
Comparing that profile against DNA submitted
to family tree companies, ancestry.com and 23andMe,
the lab discovers a match
for the DNA profile police sent them,
but only in the range of a sixth to eighth cousin
of the suspect.
- Now it's a waiting game as investigators hope
that as more people research their genealogy,
and submit their DNA to genealogy databases,
that they will get closer to finding the identity
of Lee's killer.
- Right about this exact same time in our process,
we get out of the blue a cold email.
- [Narrator] Eric Schubert, a 20 year old junior history
major at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.
- Eric emails Council Bluffs police chief, Todd Weddum
in March, 2020 and ask him if he can help
with any of their cold cases.
- Call it fate, call it divine intervention,
call it whatever you want.
- [Narrator] Council Bluffs Police vet him
through other agencies he's assisted
and the city's legal department draws up an agreement
with him, Eric gets to work.
- Eric came in outta nowhere, he actually solicited us,
called us and said, hey, I've read a little bit
about this case, I wanna help you guys.
So that kind of came outta nowhere,
we didn't expect it.
- And we sat down with him and shared our information
in our case with him.
From that point, it was interesting
because, again your hopes get up again,
you start to ride that rollercoaster up
and it was literally, oh my God, probably a week,
or so later I get a call from Eric and he says,
hey, I found his great grandparents.
He goes, I think we're gonna find him.
I was like, ooh, this huge weight being lifted,
and then I start working that angle,
and I start contacting distant relatives
and requesting DNA samples that I got from family.
They were more than helpful.
Nine times out of 10, the family was like if a family member
of mine did something like this to somebody,
I would want them to take responsibility for what they did
and more than happy to give DNA samples.
If Eric would send me lists of people,
I would send out contact letters.
A lot of them were hard to find,
at this stage in the game 40 years later,
we ran into a lot of problems.
A lot of people are deceased by now, people have moved,
they've changed numbers.
As small as the world is, it's still a very large place,
you just can't find everybody.
I would reach out to those people,
some of them that I would be able to find,
I would get samples back and then we would start
the game over again.
I would send those DNA samples in,
we would get those results, Eric would plug them
into his database of genealogy
and then he would spit out another list of names to me.
He goes, okay, that's good, that got us to here,
now let's try this.
And over the next two years, Eric and I did this.
It gave you hope, it gave you drive,
it gave you a direction, it gave you leads to follow up on
which is what you want.
So I start doing this and we follow these leads.
- [Narrator] Using genealogical research,
they had zeroed in on a man they believe might have been
Lee Rotatori's killer, but there was a surprise
in the store.
The genealogy indicated which family
the man belonged to, but his place within the family
was not clear.
- Eric was able to determine that Nemke was raised
by someone other than his biological father
which is what muddied the waters in terms
of honing in on his true identity.
- Eric called me one day and he goes,
he's not who we think he is.
He's being raised by somebody that's not really his father.
And I'm like, what?
And he is like, on paper our suspect's father
is not really his father, he's an illegitimate child
of somebody and that's why our numbers aren't matching up.
- [Narrator] Then out of the blue,
the waiting game with Parabon pays off.
The lab has flagged a DNA kit
that had been submitted by an unknown man,
one who had never been approached by the investigators.
- The man's profile helps Eric Schubert
and Parabon narrow down this suspect pool to two brothers.
One was too young to have committed the crime in 1982,
the other was Thomas O. Freeman.
- [Narrator] Both Parabon and Schubert called Council
Bluffs Police within an hour of each other with a name.
- We got a email from Parabon and an email from Eric
both saying, I think we found the guy.
We do some research, and lo and behold,
we find out that Thomas Oscar Freeman is deceased,
and not only is he deceased, we find out he was murdered,
approximately two months after Lee's homicide took place.
- [Narrator] Council Bluffs Police need
to prove Freeman's DNA is a match for the DNA found on Lee.
- So the next step is then to try to reach out
to family members to try to get a known DNA sample
to corroborate our findings.
And his brothers were deceased, his parents were deceased.
We found out who his true father was, he was deceased.
We found that Thomas had a daughter who was still alive,
she was living in St. Louis.
The Illinois State Police as part of their investigation
into the homicide of Thomas reached out to her
to get a DNA sample.
And then we piggybacked off of that investigation,
and verified the identity of our suspect
through his daughter's DNA.
- [Narrator] On Friday, February 25th, 2022,
Counsel Bluffs Police captain, Todd Weddum issues a press
release announcing detectives have cleared
the cold case homicide of Lee Rotatori.
They named Thomas Freeman as the source
of the suspect DNA found at the crime scene.
Thomas Oscar Freeman was the trucker
from West Frankfurt, Illinois.
He was 35 at the time of Lee's murder.
Police think he may have killed Lee while passing
through on a hall although his name
is not on the motels register for that night.
(intense music)
But who fired four bullets into Thomas Freeman's chest
in the summer of 1982,
just weeks after Lee Rotatori's murder?
- Council Bluff Detectives
and Illinois State troopers begin working together
on Freeman's homicide.
They don't yet know who shot him, but they do have reason
to believe that his death could be related
to Lee Rotatori's murder.
- Jerry Nemke, when he was released from prison back
in 1978, he moved to Carbondale, Illinois
and went to Southern Illinois University.
Well, Thomas Oscar Freeman was found buried
and dead approximately 15 miles away from that area.
Thomas Oscar Freeman was raised in that area
and had ties to that area, so Jerry Nemke
and Thomas Oscar Freeman both were geographically located
in the same vicinity in that same timeframe.
- [Narrator] Was it possible that Nemke and Freeman
had crossed paths in the late 70's while they were both
in the area?
Early on, Jerry Nemke had been ruled out as a suspect
in Lee's murder.
- And the first thing that I did in this case after reading
the case file was I found her husband at the time,
and I wanted his DNA.
And everything I read in this case led me to believe
that he had to be involved in this somehow.
So I found him first and I sent the detectives
from Tampa, Florida out to his house,
they collected his DNA and it was literally two,
almost three years later that I finally got the results
of that test.
- [Narrator] The DNA test came back negative,
proving that Lee's husband is not the assailant
who stabbed her to death in the best Western frontier lodge
motel room on the night of June 25th, 1982.
But as Steve Andrews studied the existing case files,
Nemke's alibi for the 24th and 25th caught his attention.
(intense music)
Jerry Nemke's DNA had proved he was not the one
who murdered his wife in 1982,
yet something didn't sit right with Detective Steve Andrews.
As Steve Andrews studied the existing case files,
Nemke's alibi for the 24th and 25th caught his attention.
- In reading through the reports his alibi
was rock solid, it was over the top solid alibi.
He had worked the previous evening until 10:00 p.m.
at night.
He didn't have to be back to his second job till later
in the next day.
To me, my thoughts is well, if I'm involved in this,
I have to establish some timeframe in between
that where I'm known and seen.
He shows up at Hackley Hospital where Lee
was working previously prior to coming to Council Bluffs
to return a lab coat, apparently out of the clear blue sky
he decided that today, the day that her body
is found before it's found, he needs to show up
and return her lab coat to her previous place of employment.
Shortly after that, then he makes a special trip out
to the stable where Lee's horse is boarded at where again,
he happens to return an item that he tells the lady
that owns the stable that Lee wanted her to have this,
and then talks to her about Lee and has another appearance
with a good close friend of Lee's.
He leaves there and then he goes to his job later
that afternoon where he has an alibi and he's seen there.
He almost went out of his way
to establish his whereabouts as not being here.
- Jerry Nemke's overly elaborate alibi led Andrews
to believe Lee's husband had more involvement in her murder
than investigators ever thought.
- [Narrator] And then there was Jerry's physical proximity
to Freeman at the end of the 70's.
Nemke served his time for killing young Chicago waitress,
Marilyn Duncan at the Menard Correctional Facility
located in southern Illinois.
- After his release in 1978,
he attended college in Carbondale, about 26 miles outside
West Frankfurt where Freeman lived,
and 15 miles from Cobden where his remains were found.
- He was shot four times in the chest
and buried in a shallow grave within two months after Lee
is killed.
Some people might think that's a coincidence,
I don't believe in coincidences at this point.
Everything I read in this case led me to believe
that he had to be involved in this somehow.
- [Narrator] Around the time Thomas Freeman
was coming into focus as the suspect in Lee's murder,
Steve found his name kept coming to mind.
- And it's like, I know I've heard
that name somewhere in this...
I don't know where I've heard this name at.
So I dig back into the files again
and I reread that in the weeks leading up to June 25th, 1982
when Lee was killed, Jerry had received multiple phone calls
from somebody he identified as Tom,
that he received three phone calls
that Jerry wasn't there for.
And then he called back and two other times,
and actually spoke to Jerry within days,
like on the 23rd before Lee was killed.
The same Tom individual had called back
and actually spoke with Lee's husband on the phone.
And I remembered that from reading those reports,
whether that Tom on the phone is our Tom,
again, I can't prove that one way or another,
but it's just another one of those coincidences
that you have to draw your own conclusions about.
- [Narrator] Nemke died in 2019,
Steve recalled reading in the early case files
that Lee had an insurance policy
with Jerry named as the beneficiary.
- Jerry had recently passed away,
and someone that he knew called me and said,
hey, I had something information I'd like to share with you,
and I'm always looking for information in reference
to this case so I'm like shoot.
And he says, I was home on leave several years ago
and I was out to the bar drinking with a friend of Jerry's,
and he told me that Jerry was all drunk in a bar one night
talking, and he told him that he had hired some guy
that he was in prison with to kill his wife,
so he could collect the insurance money.
And not only that, he said he knew when it was gonna happen,
so he was sure to make sure he established an alibi
for the timeframe of her death.
We know Thomas is deceased,
we also know that Jerry is now deceased.
Those two men may have taken the secret to Lee's homicide
with them to the grave.
- And that was one unfortunate part of this whole case
is we won't ever actually be able to go
and throw him in jail, but at least we know who it is
and I think that is some closure for us.
And obviously he can't victimize another person now, so.
- [Narrator] Steve Andrews is quick to praise
the investigators who preceded him on Lee's case
working diligently over the years.
- The work that they did was unbelievable,
I look back and I read through their reports that they did
and all the work that they did,
all the people they talked to,
the suspects they interviewed, the polygraphs they did,
the witnesses that they interviewed,
the reaching out to other agencies to look
for similar cases with similar MOs, the call records
for what they were at that time that they dug into,
again looking for potential flights coming into town
and leaving that may have brought somebody.
And once they've exhausted every option
that they had available to 'em at the time,
and every one of the leads that they had followed up
to that point led to a dead end.
- [Narrator] And the green florist's foam
at the crime scene, it's origins remain a mystery.
- It was literally the change in technology in the timeframe
of when this case went cold for them until I picked it up
is what made all the difference in the world in this case.
- I think anytime we're dealing with a true victim,
we wanna solve the case if we owe it to them,
especially if it's in a case of a homicide
where we can't talk to them, we can't ask them questions,
our goal is to try to bring justice
to the loved ones of this victim.
- Lee had a life, she had family, she was a daughter,
she was a sister, she was a mother
and it's important for those people.
- [Narrator] In a case that spent 40 years the diligence
and dedication of law enforcement officers,
along with tremendous strides in DNA technology
and the help of a young genealogy genius would finally see
the murder of Lee Rotatori solved.
(intense music)