The detective stood next to the refrigerator.

Inside her police station.

Holding a container of evidence.

She knew what she was about to do was a breach of protocol.

It could definitely get her in a lot of trouble.

But that was not going to stop her.

Spring of 2006.

A man walked out of his dental practice in the rural community of Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

He handed his patient a toothbrush.

“Come back in six months,” he said.

Then he headed into his back office to pack up.

He walked through the reception area.

The receptionist waved and gave him a big smile.

He smiled back.

But as soon as he left the building, the smile faded from his face.

Because in reality, he had a lot of problems right now.

Pretending to be happy all day was exhausting.

Dr. John Yelnick had grown up in Blairsville.

It had been his lifelong dream to raise a family here.

When he graduated from dental school thirteen years earlier, he could have set up shop in a big city.

He could have made a higher salary right off the bat.

But instead, he joined the practice of his own childhood dentist.

Right in downtown Blairsville.

And it turned out John was able to make a lot of money here.

The practice took off.

John was charming.

He was great with kids.

Lots of families wanted to come to him.

He took the extra money and invested it in real estate.

He became a millionaire by the time he was in his thirties.

But it was not until John met Michelle that he felt like he had truly made it in life.

Michelle was a single mother with two children.

To John, this was perfect.

She came with a ready-made family.

His friends worried that Michelle only wanted him for his money.

Then John’s mom got sick with cancer.

Michelle became her full-time caregiver.

For John, that was all the proof he needed.

They got married in 1997.

They adopted a little boy named JJ shortly after.

Altogether, they had three children.

They moved into a big house with a pool and a hot tub.

Everything was perfect.

Now John pulled into the driveway of a very modest home.

He sat there staring at this new place he was currently living.

How had everything fallen apart so completely?

He was tight on money.

He had lent tens of thousands of dollars to people because he was generous.

Now he was having to ask for it back because he literally needed it.

On the marriage side, he and Michelle had hit a horrible rough patch.

It just didn’t end.

They both admitted they had had affairs.

Now they were living separately.

That was why John was here at this little house instead of the big family home with the pool and the hot tub.

But the financial stress and the marital stress were not nearly as bad as a third stressor.

John was absolutely convinced that somebody was going to murder him.

This started two weeks earlier.

Somebody vandalized John’s car with spray paint.

The police looked into it.

They couldn’t figure out who had done it.

Objectively, having your car spray-painted does not mean someone is trying to kill you.

But John had a feeling.

This felt personal.

Somebody was targeting him.

Over several days, he went from my car got vandalized to someone is trying to kill me.

He believed this so completely that he went to his attorney.

He gave her $10,000.

Just in case I wind up dead.

She could use that money to investigate his murder.

John got out of his car.

He walked up the porch steps.

He unlocked the door and locked it behind him.

The house was depressing.

It was so quiet.

Nobody was here.

He wished his adopted son JJ was here.

JJ would have made the whole house feel alive.

But these days, John didn’t see JJ very much.

He went long stretches between visits.

John took off his shoes.

He walked into the living room.

On the coffee table, he saw a legal document he had been avoiding.

Divorce papers.

Michelle had filed for divorce three years earlier, in 2003.

But she and John had not been able to come to an agreement.

To be clear, they were not fighting to save the marriage.

The marriage was done.

Michelle was already living with a new boyfriend.

A Pennsylvania state trooper named Kevin Foley.

What John and Michelle had been fighting over was JJ.

Their adopted son.

Michelle wanted full custody.

John didn’t want to give up his son.

But John knew in less than twenty-four hours this would finally be over.

Their lawyers had settled on a shared custody agreement.

Michelle had already signed the paperwork.

Tomorrow, it would be John’s turn to sign.

John sat on the couch and turned on the TV.

He couldn’t focus.

He was too restless.

Instead, he called his aunt.

They talked for a while about the divorce and the custody agreement.

They said their goodbyes.

John hung up.

He stretched out on the couch.

He fell asleep right there.

The next day.

Around 3:30 p.m.

A nine-year-old boy named Zack Use walked out the front door of his parents’ house.

He crossed the lawn toward John’s house.

Zack wanted to see if John’s son, JJ, could come out and play.

He wasn’t sure if JJ would be around.

JJ split time between his mother and father.

But it was worth a shot.

When Zack reached the front steps, he stopped.

There was a little glass panel to the left of the front door.

It had been broken.

Shattered.

Glass was on the porch.

Streaks of what looked like red liquid had dried underneath the broken panel.

Zack got scared.

He thought it was blood.

He wanted to turn and run away.

But he thought about his friend JJ.

He worried that JJ might be in trouble.

He couldn’t just abandon him.

He mustered all the courage he could.

He climbed the rest of the steps to the front door.

He tried the doorknob.

The door was locked.

Carefully, Zack reached his hand through the broken panel.

He was careful not to cut himself.

He reached inside the house and unlocked the door from the inside.

He opened it.

As soon as he stepped inside, he saw papers strewn everywhere.

And a body lying motionless on the floor.

Covered in blood.

Zack turned around and ran.

Fifteen minutes later, Corporal Janelle Lied was driving with her husband and four children.

She got a call from dispatch.

A 911 call had come in from a normally quiet residential street.

The details were confusing.

Dispatch said there had been a cardiac arrest.

Corporal Lied was needed at the scene.

No other information was available.

Thinking the call was a run-of-the-mill heart attack, Lied drove straight there with her family.

When she pulled up to the home and got out of her vehicle, she knew this was not a heart attack.

A patrol officer waited for her on the porch.

His face looked grim.

Lied walked over to him.

He pointed out the broken glass and the blood stained on the ground.

“What’s going on here?” she asked. “I was told this was a cardiac arrest.”

The officer said, “It’s probably best if you just go in and look for yourself.”

Lied turned and waved to her husband and kids.

Everything’s fine. Just give me a minute.

She stepped inside the house.

The entire foyer was splashed with blood.

The floor.

The walls.

In the center of it, amongst papers strewn about, was the most mutilated body she had ever seen.

She tried to count the number of stab wounds.

She couldn’t.

This was definitely not cardiac arrest.

This was her very first murder case.

Lied needed backup.

The call had been recorded erroneously as a cardiac arrest.

The police had not sent a full emergency response.

Lied and the patrol officer were the only people on scene.

The killer or killers could still be in the area.

Maybe even in this house.

They hadn’t even secured the house yet.

And she had brought her kids and her husband with her.

She instructed the patrol officer to search the rest of the house.

Then she went back out into the front yard.

She stood between the murder scene and her family.

Her hand rested on the gun in her holster.

Soon, emergency sirens approached in the distance.

The patrol officer came out of the house.

“It’s empty,” he said. “The killer or killers are gone.”

He had found a huge puddle of blood in the basement.

The victim had bled through from the floor above.

Lied said goodbye to her husband and kids.

She sent them home.

She went back into detective mode.

Someone on scene told Lied the victim’s name.

John Yelnick.

Crime scene technicians began processing the physical evidence.

Lied began a slow walk through each room.

She wanted to get a sense of who John was and how he died.

His body was close to the front door.

But the attack had been long and chaotic.

Blood was all over the living room floor.

Divorce papers were scattered everywhere.

John’s body was barefoot.

But there were bloody shoe prints in the house.

The prints were far too big to belong to the little boy who found the body.

They must belong to the killer or killers.

Crime scene techs were already measuring the prints to determine the killer’s shoe size.

Lied didn’t see anything that looked like a murder weapon.

She didn’t see any evidence of a robbery.

The TV hadn’t been taken.

No drawers or cabinets appeared to have been opened.

That made sense.

The murder was extremely violent.

Very likely personal.

Whoever the killer was, the only thing they wanted when they entered this home was for John to die horribly.

Lied finished her sweep of the scene.

She ended up in the living room where the attack had begun.

That’s when she noticed a check on the coffee table.

Right next to the divorce papers.

The check was made out to John Yelnick for $15,000.

Attached to the check was a note.

It asked John to hold off for a few days before depositing it.

The check and note were from someone named Melissa.

Lied did a double take.

Use.

That was the last name of the neighborhood boy who had discovered John’s body.

Zack Use.

Lied wondered if Melissa Use was related to Zack Use.

Here on the coffee table, she had her first two legitimate leads.

One: her victim was in the middle of a divorce.

Two: someone—maybe his next-door neighbor—owed him a lot of money.

Money she apparently couldn’t afford to pay back in one go.

Don’t cash this right away.

It was evening when Lied finally stepped back outside.

A group of neighbors and reporters jostled around each other on the street.

Blairsville almost never had murders.

This was going to be a huge story.

Before Lied could walk down the front steps, another officer came over with an update.

The police had fanned out across the neighborhood.

They asked if anyone had seen or heard anything unusual.

Two accounts came back.

The first came from a woman.

She said the previous night around 1:30 a.m., she had woken up to the sound of a scream.

She sat up.

She heard the scream.

But the screaming didn’t continue.

She went back to bed.

The second account came from another neighbor.

They also heard something around that same time.

They heard a man yelling in what sounded like a very heated argument.

The neighbor couldn’t make out everything the man said.

But one sentence was yelled very clearly.

“I’ll never loan you money again.”

Lied immediately thought of the $15,000 check on the coffee table.

Money.

The officer said he wasn’t done.

He had one more piece of information.

A lot of John’s neighbors had told the police there was one family in particular on the block that detectives ought to look into.

The Use family.

Word around the neighborhood was that Melissa and John Yelnick had been having an affair.

The following day, April 14th, Lied sat inside an interrogation room.

Across from her sat Melissa Use and her husband Tom.

Lied had never done a murder case before.

But she was methodical.

She had a plan.

She was going to go hard at Melissa and Tom, even though they were not her top suspects.

Her top suspects were John’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Michelle, and her new boyfriend, Kevin.

In a murder case, the divorcing spouse and their new partner are always suspects number one and two.

The night before, Lied had sent an officer to tell Michelle that her soon-to-be ex-husband was dead.

When the officer got to Michelle’s house, she already knew.

She said she had heard that John had died of a heart attack.

The officer had to break the news that this was actually a murder.

Michelle and Kevin both seemed genuinely shocked.

Corporal Lied knew Kevin personally.

He was a state police trooper.

They had worked together.

Now Lied was going to have to investigate her colleague.

It was touchy.

Especially amongst cops.

Lied wanted to rule the Uses out first.

She also wanted the results of the autopsy.

Lied looked across the table at Melissa and Tom.

“What was the deal with the $15,000 check Melissa wrote to John?” she asked.

Melissa answered in a shaky voice.

She and John had been friends since ninth grade.

She was planning to open a new bakery in town.

John had loaned her $15,000 to help.

Then, out of nowhere, he asked for the money back.

Melissa said she had been disappointed.

But she knew John was in the middle of an expensive divorce.

She understood.

She only had $14,000 in her account when she wrote the check.

That was why she left the note asking him not to cash it for a few days.

Until she got the last thousand together.

Lied watched Melissa closely.

She seemed truly distraught over John’s death.

The money didn’t seem like a big issue to her at all.

But the obvious warmth Melissa felt for John raised another question.

Lied decided she couldn’t dance around it.

Even though Melissa was sitting right next to her husband.

Lied looked at Melissa.

“Were you having an affair with John?”

Melissa flushed.

“No.”

She said they had been close friends.

Nothing more.

Lied turned to Tom.

“Was your wife having an affair with John?”

For a second, Tom went quiet.

When he finally spoke, he didn’t sound angry or upset.

He sounded nervous.

He refused to answer the question.

He just kept repeating that he really had to go take care of his kids now.

Lied knew this had been a blunt thing to ask.

But Tom’s reaction was suspicious.

By the time Lied told the Uses they could go, Tom had firmly established himself in her mind as a clear person of interest.

Before Lied left the station, she checked in with an officer.

She had sent him to observe John’s autopsy.

The officer told her the forensic pathologist had determined that the killer used a one-sided blade.

They had repeatedly slashed John during the fight.

In addition to the knife wounds, John’s jugular had been cut by glass.

John had defensive wounds on his hands.

He also had cuts on his back.

That suggested he had tried to run away at one point.

Lied already knew this.

But hearing the details reinforced how brutal this murder was.

Whoever did this must have truly hated John.

Lied already had one suspect in Tom Use.

His wife might have been having an affair with John.

That would be enough to inspire hate.

Despite her inexperience with murder cases, Lied felt confident.

She could solve this as long as she was allowed to work slowly and methodically.

The case was already getting a lot of attention.

There would be pressure to show results fast.

If she moved too slowly, this case might get taken away from her.

Or another police agency might get called in.

Lied didn’t want that.

But she also didn’t want to compromise her process.

She would have to strike a balance.

The officer who went to the autopsy had come back with John Yelnick’s fingernail clippings.

Blood samples.

Tissue samples.

Lied was supposed to send them off to the state police lab for DNA testing.

Lied decided she was not going to do that.

She wanted to keep her investigatory options open.

She wanted to guarantee that she knew everything going on with her evidence.

After the officer left, Lied went to the department refrigerator.

She put the samples inside.

Then she went home.

April 15th.

Two days after John Yelnick was murdered.

Corporal Lied had spoken to a number of John’s friends and family members.

They painted John as a great guy and a dedicated father.

Today, Lied went to John’s dental practice.

She wanted to talk to his colleagues.

As soon as she arrived, she was glad she had come.

The dental hygienists and the receptionist had a lot to say.

About Michelle Yelnick.

During that long, multi-year fight over the divorce, Michelle had lodged allegations against John.

She said he abused their adopted son, JJ.

Even Michelle’s own family had not believed her.

Officials declined to press charges.

But at one point, Michelle accused John of violating a stay-away order.

Police came and arrested him at work.

John’s colleagues thought Michelle was a total nightmare.

She also called the office regularly to demand money.

John often caved and gave it to her.

According to one hygienist, Michelle had called just a few days before the murder.

That time, John had refused to speak to her.

Lied’s ear perked up.

It wasn’t just the colleagues who said Michelle was money-hungry.

A lot of John’s friends said that.

They said it was Michelle who wanted the big house with the pool and the hot tub.

John never felt comfortable with that flashy lifestyle.

To many friends and colleagues, that contrast drove them apart.

Lied began to wonder.

Maybe John and Michelle had a fight about money a few days before the murder.

Michelle calling, demanding money.

John not taking her call.

Could that have been enough to inspire Michelle to murder John?

Maybe.

But Lied also discovered that Michelle was listed as a beneficiary of John’s life insurance.

If John died, she stood to inherit millions of dollars.

A two-fold financial reason for Michelle to want to harm John.

But it didn’t seem possible that Michelle could overpower John.

He would be able to fight her off.

Lied thought, Maybe Michelle hired someone.

Someone larger and more physical.

She certainly had the money to do that.

As Lied left the dental office, she thought about how to approach Michelle.

Given the sensitivity of Michelle dating a cop, Lied did not want to move too soon.

Not without enough ammunition first.

This was not just her first murder case.

It was the biggest case she had ever worked, period.

Reporters called her constantly.

She didn’t want to screw anything up.

John Yelnick’s funeral was held on Wednesday, April 19th.

Six days after the murder.

John’s friends and family were getting antsy.

Why was the investigation moving so slowly?

Lied understood their frustration.

From day one, there was enormous media pressure.

Public pressure to solve this thing right away.

And John himself, before he was killed, had this paranoia that he was going to be murdered.

Now he turned up dead.

It seemed like a crazy coincidence.

Or that John knew something.

A prediction that came true.

But Lied felt like John’s friends and family didn’t understand why this was taking time.

She wasn’t being slow.

She was being careful.

That was her way.

Without any departmental guidance on how to work a homicide, Lied developed her own careful method.

For the next several months, Lied followed her protocol.

She took her time.

With intention.

The crime scene unit had not turned up any matchable DNA or fingerprints.

The bloody footprints didn’t belong to any of her suspects.

For now, Lied relied heavily on interviews.

She ran down every single tip and rumor.

Systematically ruling things out one by one.

As she did this, she kept tabs on her three best suspects.

Tom Use.

Kevin Foley.

Michelle Yelnick.

She made no move to arrest any of them.

Sometimes the complaints from the public and from John’s family got to her.

But she was determined to manage the case her way.

She felt like she was on the right path.

That was until Melissa hired a pair of psychics.

Summer of 2006.

Three months after the murder.

Lied got a call from Melissa.

She was surprised to hear from her.

Even more surprised when Melissa said she wanted to meet at John’s house.

When Lied showed up, Melissa was not alone.

She stood on the sidewalk with two older women.

She introduced them as psychic sisters.

She had met them at a psychic tea party.

They had visions about the case.

Lied was not happy about this.

She was even less happy to learn that John’s own family had given permission for the psychics to enter John’s house.

But Lied knew John’s family was getting edgy.

If she wanted more time to work her case, she needed to placate them.

If that meant working with these psychics contacted by one of the suspect’s wives, then that was what she was going to do.

Lied followed Melissa and the psychic sisters as they walked into John’s front yard.

They began saying they felt hot and cold patches.

Lied did her best not to roll her eyes.

They went into the house.

It had not been cleaned after the murder.

It was still splattered with blood.

The psychic sisters had a premonition.

The killing had happened in the dining room area.

They saw a knife.

They saw stab wounds.

They saw a bloody footprint.

They said the killer drove a black or red car.

They said the killer was not Melissa’s husband, Tom.

Melissa seemed excited.

Lied thought it was ridiculous.

The blood made it obvious where the killing happened.

The details of John’s death and the police investigation had been all over the news.

The psychics could have learned all of this before showing up.

These were not revelations.

And the fact that these psychics—whom Melissa herself had hired—were now exonerating Melissa’s husband was not convincing.

As the group left the house, Lied thought the only thing the psychics had been good for was taking some pressure off her slow investigation.

She knew John Yelnick’s family had lost faith in her.

But what they didn’t know was that she still had one more thing she wanted to try.

She just had to wait for the right time.

February 2007.

Ten months after the murder.

Corporal Lied finally got her chance.

John’s cousins made an impassioned plea to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office.

They wanted them to take over the investigation.

Lied’s cooperation with those psychics had bought her a little time.

But John’s family and Melissa Use had gotten more and more agitated by Lied’s slow pace.

They felt the psychics had given them as much information as the police had.

The attorney general agreed.

Lied was losing her case.

This was exactly what Lied had been most worried about.

A bigger agency coming in to take over her investigation.

But the attorney general’s office was not the agency Lied had expected.

Even though this stung, Lied realized she could finally make that play she had been sitting on for almost a year.

Lied went to the refrigerator in the Blairsville police station.

She took out the little container of fingernail clippings and tissue samples from John Yelnick.

She had been told to send these samples to the state police crime lab right away.

She hadn’t.

In a total breach of protocol, she had put them in the fridge and waited.

Now, with the attorney general publicly stepping in, the case became even more high-profile.

That allowed Lied to send these samples not to the state police lab.

But to the FBI crime lab.

A higher rung on the hierarchy.

Normally, the FBI would never take samples from a small-town murder case.

But now it was a huge public case.

National news.

Lied knew she could take advantage.

She repackaged those fingernail clippings and the other samples.

She sent them off to the FBI.

She waited.

The day the results came back, Lied was nervous.

There was a chance she was about to look very stupid for sitting on this evidence for as long as she had.

She sat at her computer.

She opened the email with the DNA results.

Her eyes went wide.

She almost couldn’t believe what she was reading.

Her strategy of intentionally slow-playing the investigation and sitting on this evidence until right now had totally paid off.

Lied was looking at the name of John’s killer.

Here is what authorities believe happened.

Around 12:30 a.m. on April 13th, 2006, the killer drove a red car onto a quiet residential street in Blairsville.

They stopped in front of a modest brick home.

They cut their lights.

The killer climbed out and looked around.

Dark and silent.

The killer walked around to the back of the home.

They slipped inside through an unlocked back door.

They walked through the dining room and into the living room.

John Yelnick was sleeping on the couch.

The killer gripped a single-edged knife in their fist.

They walked right up to John.

They raised the blade up.

They brought it down directly onto John.

John woke up screaming.

He put his hands up to protect himself.

He tried clawing at the killer.

He got the killer’s skin under his fingernails.

John rolled off the couch.

Desperate to get away.

He got up and stumbled away.

The killer chased him down.

They wrestled.

The killer kept stabbing.

John flailed his arms.

He hit the divorce papers on the coffee table.

Papers flew everywhere.

On pure adrenaline, John broke away from the killer.

He tried to run for the front door.

He made it to the front foyer.

He reached for the front door.

The killer shoved John.

John went flying toward the pane of glass to the side of the door.

His head went through the glass.

The glass severed his jugular.

John bled to death right there.

The killer watched until John was totally still.

Then they walked back out of the home.

Tracking John’s blood right back out the door.

The killer was very confident they would never be caught.

Primarily because the killer knew people trusted them with their lives.

The killer was Michelle’s new boyfriend.

Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Kevin Foley.

The fact that he was a cop was the very reason Corporal Lied had decided not to send the evidence to the state police crime lab.

Lied knew Kevin.

She liked him.

She trusted him.

But as soon as her investigation began, she heard about how much Kevin seemed to hate John.

Because of the allegations Michelle had made that John abused JJ.

Even though those allegations were ruled totally unfounded, Kevin believed them.

Lied became increasingly paranoid that Kevin was the killer.

She was afraid her case would be taken over not by the attorney general’s office, but by the state police.

If Kevin was guilty, she couldn’t trust the state police crime lab not to cover up evidence.

Or Kevin would get involved, find out, and cover it up himself.

It was too risky.

So she didn’t send the evidence to the state crime lab.

Instead, she kept the fingernails and tissue samples.

She slow-played her investigation.

She bided her time until she could figure out what to do.

The answer came when the attorney general took over the case.

Lied got access to the FBI crime lab.

The FBI scientists tested the DNA found under John’s fingernails.

It was a match for Kevin Foley.

In the end, state trooper Kevin Foley was found guilty of first-degree murder.

He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Michelle Yelnick was never charged in connection with the case.

That $10,000 John gave his lawyer?

He never needed it.

The detective solved his murder for free.

She just had to break every rule to do it.