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NARRATOR: Up next, a young girl sees her mother's killer,
but can't identify him.
-KEVIN BRASS: There was nothing she was a complete blank.
NARRATOR: With no other evidence, the case turns cold.
-FRANKIE MARTIN: After Kathy was laid to rest,
I was always struggling, trying to find
out who could have done this.
NARRATOR: Until forensic scientists
decided to play-act the crime.
-KATHERINE LONG: Basically what we
were doing was we were strangling each other.
NARRATOR: And when they did, found
evidence hidden for 15 years.
-KEVIN BRASS: It takes science and luck to solve cases.
In this case, it took a lot of luck.
NARRATOR: Mike Odom met Kathy Martin in high school.
They dated and soon decided to make a life together.
But, before they could get married,
Mike was arrested for selling ***, a mistake that
put him behind bars for two years.
-FRANKIE MARTIN: I remember while he
was in the penitentiary, and Kathy was dead set
on waiting on him to get out, to date him again, which she did.
NARRATOR: Shortly after his release,
Mike and Kathy did get married and had two children, Tasha
and Shawn Kathy's father even gave Mike
a job, working in his sign business.
-FRANKIE MARTIN: Kathy was set on making the marriage work.
Did everything she could.
NARRATOR: Things were going well, until one night, when
Mike couldn't get in touch with Kathy, who
said she'd be home with the two children.
Kathy didn't answer the phone so Mike called his next door
neighbor and asked him to see if anything was wrong.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: The neighbor
went over, beat on the door.
Nobody answered.
He looked in, and I think the TV was going.
There was just something suspicious.
NARRATOR: But instead of calling police,
the neighbor drove a quarter-mile into town, found
a policeman, and they both went back to the Odom's house
together.
The officer entered the unlocked house.
Inside, on the living room sofa was four-year-old Tasha,
beaten and unconscious, but still alive.
He found two-month-old Shawn unharmed in the back room.
In the next room, he found Kathy Odom on the floor,
naked and covered in blood.
She'd been stabbed to death.
An ambulance rushed four-year-old Tasha
to the hospital.
When Kathy's father arrived at the scene,
police told him little about what had happened.
-FRANKIE MARTIN: I said, where's the children?
He said, well, the children have been taken to the hospital,
and he said, that would be a good place for you
to go and check on the children.
-KEVIN BRASS: Frank described to me
what it was like to be sitting in the hospital,
and he looked up at a TV set, and that's
when he learned that his daughter had been killed.
-FRANKIE MARTIN: I didn't know that at the time
and I seen that.
Well, I went outside the hospital
and sat down, cried a long time, and until I
got myself back together a little
bit to-- I never did go back to the house that night,
which was strange.
NARRATOR: When Mike Odom got there,
police paid special attention to his appearance.
-SGT. HARRY FIKARIS: Mike Odom, the husband, drives up,
and he's wearing blue jeans and a blue shirt,
and one of the investigators notices
that he's got stains on his shirt.
Is that blood?
Is it not blood?
NARRATOR: A search of the Odom's home
revealed blood in the bathroom, which meant the killer had
cleaned up before leaving, but police
found no evidence of a break-in.
All the doors were locked, except the front door.
This indicated Kathy probably knew her killer.
Kathy Odom's autopsy showed she had been stabbed 19 times
and sexually assaulted.
-KELLY SIEGLER: This is a crime of passion.
It's not a stranger killing because, why would
a stranger feel the need to stab her 16 times
plus slash her throat three more times.
NARRATOR: Kathy Odom's clothes told
police something about what happened.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: She took them off.
She folded them up deliberately, and her clothes haven't been
ripped off of her, so she voluntarily
took her clothes off.
NARRATOR: Police believe that the killer attacked
Kathy Odom's daughter, Tasha, in order
to make Kathy do whatever he wanted.
-KELLY SIEGLER: Number one, it would make Tasha stop crying
and, more importantly, it would convince Kathy
that he's serious, and she better go
along with what he's going to do.
NARRATOR: Apparently, the killer used a cord from a nearby lamp
and bound Kathy's wrists before sexually assaulting her.
Then, stabbing her to death.
-KATHERINE LONG: In the end, she ended up
losing her life while she was protecting
herself and her children.
NARRATOR: As family members tried
to cope with Kathy's ***, they
prayed for four-year-old Tasha's recovery.
-FRANKIE MARTIN: They had Tasha on IVs.
She was in a coma state.
She had been beaten bad.
NARRATOR: As doctors worked on the little girl,
police talked to her father, Mike.
-SGT. HARRY FIKARIS: His emotions-- he was emotional.
He was distraught, but there were some people at the scene
that thought, we need to look at this person a little bit more.
NARRATOR: Also suspicious, Mike Odom didn't come straight home
after work on the night Kathy was murdered.
Instead, he went out with friends.
That's why he was calling his wife that night,
to let her know he'd be late.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: We've seen it before,
where an individual has arranged a ***.
He's at another location.
He calls the person.
Go check on my wife.
So, we're always suspicious of the husband
until we can get them cleared out.
NARRATOR: When police interviewed Mike Odom,
they saw stains on his shirt, which
was taken to the forensic lab for testing.
Police also found suspicious stains
on the floor mats of Tim Robinson's car,
the neighbor who first contacted police.
-SGT. HARRY FIKARIS: We had to get the floor mat.
We had to send it to the lab and have it tested.
NARRATOR: The medical examiner estimated that Kathy Odom was
murdered about six hours before her body was found,
which would have been about 1 o'clock in the afternoon.
Mike Odom and his neighbor, Tim Robinson,
both claimed to be at work at the time.
While investigators check their alibis,
they got a potential witness.
Tasha Odom emerged from her coma and told investigators
she remembered a man entering the house and coming up to her.
-SHARLENE MARTIN: What Tasha could remember
was that the person put their hands up over her face
and so that tells you right there they knew Tasha.
She said he had yellow hair, like you, Nanny.
Your hair yellow.
NARRATOR: Mike Odom didn't have blond hair
and neither did Tim Robinson, but the killer's hair
color was all Tasha could remember.
-KEVIN BRASS: There was nothing.
She was a complete blank.
She remembered nothing.
NARRATOR: When the forensic tests came back,
the stains in Tim Robinson's car turned out to be motor oil.
The stains on Mike Odom's shirt were paint.
In addition, coworkers provided solid alibis for both of them,
and they each passed polygraphs.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: They don't have anything
to do with it, then we want to get them cleared out as quickly
as possible, so we can move on to the next person.
NARRATOR: And that next person was
mentioned by everyone who knew Kathy.
It was her brother-in-law, Greg Markwardt.
-KELLY SIEGLER: Everyone knew their relationship,
and that it wasn't good-- that he had this weird obsession
for her-- that she didn't like him--
that she was afraid of him and that he had tried to make
advances toward her before-- to put a move on her before,
and she didn't like it.
NARRATOR: And there was ample evidence
Greg had been in the house.
KATHERINE LONG: They found his fingerprints,
his hair throughout the scene.
NARRATOR: There was only one problem.
As a family member, who had been in the house numerous times,
this didn't prove a thing.
The only witness to Kathy Odom's ***,
her four-year-old daughter, Tasha,
had sustained a massive blow to her head.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: She had injuries to her face
with swelling and everything, and it
would appear that she was hit with a fist.
NARRATOR: But after two days in a coma, Tasha rallied.
Before her release from the hospital,
her uncle, Greg Markwardt, came to visit.
It was an encounter Tasha's grandmother would never forget.
-GREG MARKWARDT: Hi, Tasha.
How are you feeling?
-SHARLENE MARTIN: Hi, Greg.
-GREG MARKWARDT: How's she doing?
-SHARLENE MARTIN: Better.
-GREG MARKWARDT: I brought you this.
-SHARLENE MARTIN: Tasha, when she saw Greg, she looked over
at me, like scared to death look.
NARRATOR: When they ask little Tasha whether it was her Uncle
Greg who entered the house on the day of the attack,
she said she couldn't remember.
-KEVIN BRASS: They tried different things
to try to bring out those memories.
At one point they even hypnotized
her, hoping they could find some grain of memory.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: She was so traumatized,
she never recalled it.
NARRATOR: 35-year-old Greg Markwardt
had been married to Kathy Odom's sister, Shelley,
for four years.
Shelley and Greg had served time in prison
for possession of ***.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: It's the drug scene
of the '80s they were caught up in.
NARRATOR: In fact, one of the reasons
Kathy wanted to move to a new house,
was to get away from Greg, who had made
many *** advances toward her.
-SHARLENE MARTIN: She was scared of Greg.
She said, I would not want to be alone with him by myself.
NARRATOR: Oddly, despite these rebuffs,
Greg Markwardt was surprisingly open about his attraction
to Kathy, particularly to one part of her body.
-KELLY SIEGLER: He had a thing for Kathy's
tummy, which is sort of odd.
I mean, why would he pay attention to her tummy
and be obsessed by that?
NARRATOR: This fixation was so obvious,
Kathy talked about it with friends.
-SGT. HARRY FIKARIS: Kathy even would say,
and I don't know what it is, but he's just-- there's something
about my stomach, and he wants to have sex with me.
ROGER WEDGEWORTH: I've heard of people having fetishes
with feet or hands, but that's the first one having a fetish
with a stomach that I've heard of.
NARRATOR: Coincidentally, Kathy Odom
had been stabbed repeatedly in the stomach.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: And these
are deep, penetrating wounds.
NARRATOR: When questioned by police,
Markwardt denied any involvement,
but said little else.
-KEVIN BRASS: At some point in that detective's interview,
Greg said, excuse me.
I need to go out and put money into the parking meter.
He got up. He left.
He never came back.
NARRATOR: Greg's wife, Shelley, the victim's sister,
said Greg drove her to school at 10:30 on the day of the ***
and picked her up again at 2:30.
This four-hour window was more than enough time for Greg
to commit the *** and clean up
before picking up his wife from school.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: The way I would describe Shelley is,
she's extremely codependent and absolutely
was under the control of Greg Markwardt.
This much I know, that he got her hooked on ***,
which, to me, is the worst thing that a human being
could do to another one.
NARRATOR: An analysis of the crime scene
provided little help.
Greg's fingerprints and hairs were found in Kathy's house,
but other family members' prints were found there as well.
-KATHERINE LONG: He was her brother-in-law, law
and he had been to the house before.
So it was natural that you would find
his fingerprints and his hairs.
NARRATOR: Although Kathy had been sexually assaulted,
this crime occurred years before DNA was widely
used in *** investigations.
-KATHERINE LONG: At the time, in the 1980s,
they were using serology.
Basically, they were doing blood group typing,
and it was very difficult.
You need a very large sample, and, plus,
you would only get a blood type.
NARRATOR: The blood type from the *** kit
was consistent with Greg Markwardt's blood type.
-KATHERINE LONG: He was a type O. About 50% of the population
is a type O, so that's not giving you much information.
NARRATOR: So without more evidence, the case went cold.
-FRANKIE MARTIN: After Kathy was laid to rest and time went on,
I found myself at the cemetery most all the time,
but I was always struggling, trying
to find out who could have done this.
-SHARLENE MARTIN: They say if you don't solve the crime
within a month with all the fresh leads,
there's not a possibility there that you would.
NARRATOR: Greg and Shelley Markwardt went on
with their lives, but for Kathy's father
it was especially difficult.
-KEVIN BRASS: The idea that he had
to go through his daughter's ***
and then live, believing for all those years,
with all his heart, that the man who did it
was married to his other daughter.
Can you imagine what that would be like?
NARRATOR: It took 11 years before DNA testing became
dependable enough to generate a DNA
profile from the biological evidence
in Kathy Odom's *** kit.
When that profile was compared to Greg Markwardt's DNA,
it wasn't 100% conclusive, but it did show
that Greg was among the 2% of the general population, who
could have been the perpetrator.
-FRANKIE MARTIN: Well, when this came forward,
I thought, sure, we had him.
NARRATOR: But Greg had an explanation.
He claimed he and Kathy were having a consensual affair
and was with her on the morning of her ***,
but he insisted she was alive when he left.
-SGT. HARRY FIKARIS: Greg Markwardt was not
arrested at that time, because the district attorney we were
talking to did not feel like we could get
a conviction on this case with him saying, at that time
I was having an affair with her--
that we were having consensual sex.
-KEVIN BRASS: They would have to prove that Greg was there
that day, and that Greg was there to *** Kathy.
NARRATOR: But how would they do it?
It had been four years since DNA testing showed that Greg
Markwardt was among the 2% of the general population, who
could have sexually assaulted and presumably murdered Kathy
Odom, but investigators weren't sure
how to counter Greg's claim that he was involved
in a consensual affair with Kathy
around the time of her ***.
While this was taking place, investigators
were working with Katherine Long at Orchid Cellmark,
a private forensic lab in Dallas.
-SGT. HARRY FIKARIS: Katherine Long--
her dad was the chief of police in El Paso, Texas,
so she thinks a little differently
than your normal scientist.
NARRATOR: And Cellmark was doing some unusual experiments
at the time.
-KATHERINE LONG: Basically, what we were doing was,
we were strangling each other.
NARRATOR: Not for fun.
It was business to determine whether a killer would deposit
skin cells in the act of choking a victim.
-KATHERINE LONG: We would swab their neck.
We would also swab the hands of the person
who performed the choking.
NARRATOR: That's when they realized
there was a significant transfer of skin cells.
-KATHERINE LONG: And it was actually very high.
NARRATOR: Investigators needed to find something in Kathy's
evidence file that would have contained
the perpetrator's skin cells.
The answer was the electrical cord
used to bind Kathy's hands.
-KATHERINE LONG: Any time you go anywhere,
you leave a piece of yourself behind, be it skin cells,
be it a hair follicle, be it a fingerprint.
NARRATOR: In an incredible piece of luck,
the cord had been stored, not in a plastic bag, but a paper bag.
-KATHERINE LONG: That paper bag provides breathability,
so if there is any moisture on that item, it's going to dry,
and that will, therefore, prolong the DNA life.
It will actually preserve the DNA
longer than it would in a plastic bag.
NARRATOR: The cord was covered in blood,
so scientists swabbed the cord for the blood and any skin
cells that existed with the blood.
Testing revealed two genetic profiles.
One was Kathy Odom's DNA.
The other was Greg Markwardt's.
The only way Markwardt's DNA would have been
on the bloody electrical cord found wrapped around Kathy's
hands, was if he were the killer.
Greg Markwardt was arrested and charged
with Kathy Odom's ***.
In prison, Markwardt told the whole chilling story
to a fellow inmate.
Markwardt said he was high on ***
when he drove to Kathy's house that day.
Once inside, he made a *** advance, which she rejected.
-GREG MARKWARDT: I thought maybe that--
-KATHY ODOM: Just stop.
-GREG MARKWARDT: You tell me that--
-KATHY ODOM: Just stop.
-GREG MARKWARDT: You say we don't--
-KATHY ODOM: Just get out of here, Greg.
NARRATOR: To force her to comply,
he struck his four-year-old niece, Tasha, repeatedly
in the head, leaving her for dead.
The baby, Shawn, was in the next room,
and Greg threatened to kill him too.
In order to save the baby's life, Kathy complied.
Using a knife from the kitchen, Greg cut the electrical cord
from a lamp and bound Kathy's wrists,
leaving his DNA on the cord.
After he sexually assaulted Kathy, he stabbed her to death.
He washed up in the bathroom and changed into Kathy's husband's
clothing to keep blood out of his car.
Little did Markwardt know, advances in science
would be able to identify him as the perpetrator 15 years later.
-KELLY SIEGLER: Sweet.
Thank you, God.
Justice.
God knows what we're going to have in 10 years or 20 years.
It's even better and more advanced than what we have now.
It's amazing.
NARRATOR: When faced with this evidence,
Greg Markwardt pled guilty to Kathy's ***
and was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
He died of liver disease after serving
four years of his sentence.
He was 56 years old.
-SGT. ROGER WEDGEWORTH: It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
That's the way I feel about it.
-FRANKIE MARTIN: It doesn't bring back Kathy.
I'll always remember her, the house
she put together, the things we did.
It's tough to lose a child, but I
thank the good Lord for everything he did.
-SGT. HARRY FIKARIS: It's just one of those cases
that-- I guess it makes you proud to be a part of-- that we
were able to have a good ending to,
and that's just filing on him-- that Greg was not able to get
away with *** in this case, but there's
a lot more out there that are still unsolved.