Colorado Oldest Cold Case Was Just SOLVED after 40 Years — arrest shocks community.

On a cold January evening in 1980, 21-year-old Helene Pruszynski finishes her shift at KHOW Radio in Denver and walks to a nearby bus stop for the ride home. She is only two weeks into the internship she moved across the country from Massachusetts to pursue. A college junior with a promising future, she never makes it home. When Helene fails to return, her family grows increasingly worried. The search ends in tragedy when her body is discovered in a vacant field off Daniels Park Road in Douglas County. Investigators determine that she had been abducted from the bus stop, sexually assaulted, and fatally stabbed. Detectives carefully preserve biological evidence collected from her clothing and body, but in 1980 the technology needed to identify her killer simply does not exist. There is no national DNA database and no way to compare the evidence against millions of potential suspects. The investigation gradually goes cold. Unknown to investigators at the time, the man responsible was already on parole in Arkansas for a previous rape conviction when Helene was murdered. Over the years, he relocated, changed his name, became a truck driver in Florida, and lived freely for decades while Helene's family continued to live with the pain of an unsolved murder. "When we received that phone call 40 years ago, it was as if someone reached in and tore our hearts out," Helene's sister, Janet, later told the court. Everything changed in 2017. Detectives turned to investigative genetic genealogy, uploading the preserved DNA profile for comparison with public genealogy databases. The breakthrough began with an ordinary woman in Georgia who had submitted her own DNA in search of her family history—never imagining that her decision would ultimately help identify the man responsible for Helene Pruszynski's murder nearly four decades earlier. #coldcase (https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/coldcase) #truecrimedocumentary (https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/truec...) #solvedcases (https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/solve...)