Linda Slaten

On September 4th, 1981, Linda Slaten was murdered inside her apartment while her sons slept in another room. The case had gone cold for decades, but was finally solved through genetic genealogy. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the murder of Linda Slaten. One of Linda’s sons would go on to say that the killer was the “last person on his radar.” You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetime Visit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation information An Emash Digital production See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Hello everyone and welcome to episode 485 of the True Crime All the Time Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Give me, how are you?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  I'm good.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  Are you?

• 0:17Speaker 01

  How are you?

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Oh, I always love it.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  Always love it.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, you ready to get into this episode?

• 0:28Speaker 01

  As a shadow expert, I am.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, shadow expert, which if you listen to our Patreon episode from last Saturday night, we talked about that.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  That's right. So if you need one, you know who to call.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  These episodes always start out strange for me because we don't do a lot of the routine that we do with our Sunday episode.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't have the incoming music or intro.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Right. We don't talk about all of our other.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  We just get into.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  We just get right in. So we're talking about Linda Slaten. On September 4th, 1981, Linda Slaten was murdered inside her apartment while her sons slept in another room. The case was cold for decades, but was recently solved with the use of genetic genealogy. One of Linda's sons would go on to say that the killer was the last person on his radar.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  That's always interesting.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  It is because we're not giving away who the killer is. We'll find out as we go through the episode, but you know, there's two things here real quick. I've said it before, but genetic genealogy is so fascinating.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  To me, and what a groundbreaking technology it's been in solving some of these cold cases.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  It really has been. And then, you know, for a woman to be murdered inside her apartment while her sons are asleep in another room. You know, I've said it before, this is a scary situation to me. You think about where you live, right? That is supposed to be your safe space.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  You know, once you get inside the door and lock it, you shut out the outside world and. You you feel safe. You should feel safe.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Shouldn't have any concerns.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  No, unfortunately, we've done a lot of cases where that that turns out not to be true. Linda Joyce Patterson Slaten was born on November 8th, 1950 in Arkansas. Her sister Judy recalled that she was a pretty unpopular young woman and many men asked her out. Linda met and married a man named Frank Slaten. Sources didn't say how old she was when she married Frank. The Tampa Tribune reported that Linda was 15, though, when she became pregnant with her son Jeff.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. So an early motherhood.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, early motherhood. She might have gotten married early also.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  But it would have been the 60s. I mean, I I think, you know, people were getting married. Or at least back in time, people did get married younger.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Much more often, I think, than than people do today. Their second son, Tim, was born a few years later. But Frank was an alcoholic and he was abusive to Linda. Linda's sons told 48 Hours, it was hard to know exactly when Frank began beating Linda. The more he drank, the more violent he was.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  I hate hearing that, but it is a universal.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Thing with people that drink too much, you know, it's it's it happens a lot.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  It can be.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  It can be.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I I don't know if it's universal because I think you and I have had this discussion, right? Some people who drink, they become the life of the party, happy, go lucky. But for many people, alcohol affects them in a in a dark way.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Very much so.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  And so it does, I think it's different, you know, person by person. Obviously, if you're a violent person, the chances are alcohol is probably just going to magnify that.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  In a in a in an even worse way. Jeff recalled the disturbing violent incident. He witnessed when he was only six or seven years old, he said, I remember one time I was in the bathroom. He had her by the throat with a gun to her head and I was coming there trying to get him off of her. And I felt like I had saved her by that, you know, that night. So. I mean, six, seven year old kids, frankly, no kids, should have to witness this happening to their mother.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Oh, not at all.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  But, uh, very terrifying when you're six years old or seven years old. By 1974, Linda was 24 years old and ready for a new start. She had just divorced Frank after nine years of marriage. So, I mean, I think if you do the math, she probably did get married when she was around 15 years old.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Sounds like it.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  And it was difficult for Linda as a, a single mom. She struggled to find work. She couldn't afford a car. Although she didn't have a lot of money, she always made sure her boys were taken care of. And, and you and I have talked about single moms many, many times, right? I think being a, a, a single parent at all is tough.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Very tough.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  I have a lot of respect for single moms, especially. You know, my mom was a single mom for a period of time. And when I hear this, I think of my mom. We didn't have a lot of money. She worked very hard. All the money that she had that was outside of bills or what you would call extra money.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  She spent on me.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  She didn't buy new clothes for herself. She didn't go out and get her nails done. She didn't do any of that. She made sure that I had a, a baseball glove, a bat, new clothes for school.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  You were her world.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  So, I mean, I just, I have a lot of respect. Tim told the Lakeland Ledger, the only thing on her mind all the time was just me and my brother and taking care of us.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  That's just a good parent.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  It is a good parent. You know, we do a lot of cases and we did one last week about two very, very bad parents.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  We did.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  That was a rough episode to do when we talked about the Erica Green case, but by and large, most parents, you'd have to say have this philosophy. It's like their kids are their world.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  They would do anything for them.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Very selfless.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and you would give up something for yourself if your kids had to have something.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  And that's the way it should be.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  It's the way it should be, and it's the way most parents are.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  But not all.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  I mean, you made the decision to bring those kids into the world. They are your responsibility. You need to take care of them.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  I, I, I think that's well said.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  And well thought out. I don't know if it's well thought out, but it's well said. I'll, I'll put it that way. Linda made her own clothes to save money and even taught Tim to sew so that he could pass home.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Hey, nothing wrong with that.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  They still have home back?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  I don't know. I took it though, as a kid.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  I did too.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  You, you took it three times, I'm assuming.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  But I didn't want to go there, but.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  That one year that you had to.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  They called it the, the triple peat. Not the repeat. It was a triple peat.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  They had to write new procedures in that school because of that. Like what, what do you mean we got someone repeating that grade again?

• 7:57Speaker 00

  And I think at one point they were just like, we just gotta let this kid through. I mean, this is just getting ridiculous at this.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Right. We rewrote all the procedures manuals last year. I don't want to do it because someone's going to have to go through a fourth time. Let them go.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, when you were driving in the seventh grade, they were just like, we gotta get, we gotta push this kid on.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  The fact that I had this same beard, just a different color back then. Yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  Oh, Jeff told the Lakeland ledger, anywhere she'd go, she'd just start talking to people. And, you know, people who knew Linda said that she was just the type of person who would talk to and befriend anyone. Sometimes she would also pick up hitchhikers. She'd say, I'm just giving them a ride. She was, according to Jeff, way too trusting of people.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  That, that, that is a little bit, uh, over the top with the trust.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  It is, but in the seventies, right? That's something a lot of people did.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  They did.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  Not so much today.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't see a lot of people on the road picking up hitchhikers. I'm still, I'm sure it still does happen, but I think with the proliferation of, you know, true crime, that is probably done a lot because so many cases revolve around hitchhiking.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  I, I kind of feel bad for like people that really need a ride, like.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Their car went off the road and they need to get down to the gas station and they just see, you know, cars passing by one after the other, because people are like, I'd really like to help them. But I don't know if that is. You know, are they really out of gas? Are they just carrying that gas can because they want in here?

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Are they trying to set me up? Yeah, I think people aren't as trusting anymore. In early 1981, Linda and her boys moved from Decatur, Alabama to Lakeland, Florida. After Linda's long-term relationship ended. The Tampa Tribune reported that Linda's ex threatened her.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Not surprising.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Not surprising that her ex threatened?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, based on some of the things that he.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Oh, I think this was a different person.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Oh, this is a different ex. Oh.

• 10:07Speaker 00

  I, I'm not for sure. It just said X.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  But I thought, um, because it said her long-term relationship ended. And I think her marriage ended in like 74. This is early eighties.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Well, that's unfortunate that she's got somebody else that's uh.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Is threatening her abusive. That's the way I was, was taking it. So they moved in with Linda's parents in Lakeland, Florida for several months. Linda was working as a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Piggly Wiggly.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  But she wasn't working at the time of her death. Yeah, I've been in Piggly Wiggly's before.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  I think you like the Piggly Wiggly's.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  I like grocery stores, period, because grocery stores have food. And I'm a big fan of food.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  That you are.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  Linda was also in a new relationship with a construction worker. She met when he was laying pipe along a roadside. Well, you're gonna laugh at laying pipe. I, I should have known it.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  I'm so juvenile sometimes.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  Sometimes. Linda walked by and they struck up a conversation. Yeah, it's funny how people meet people. It really is. Um, you know, this guy's laying pipe. I knew that was gonna crack you up. That's why I said it again. But, you know, you just walk by somebody, you strike up a conversation. And the next thing you know, you kind of hit it off and.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  And that happens, right? It's, it's kind of nice, you know, when you can meet somebody and, and they get you and you get them and you can, you know, have that rapport going back and forth.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Without effort.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  It happens in different places, right? People meet people in bars. They meet people in churches.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  She met somebody just walking down the side of the road. Linda's son said that although she experienced several abusive relationships. Her last boyfriend was a good person who was kind to her and them.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Which is. Nice to hear.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it must have been, you know, nice, not only for her, but for the kids, right? Because they had to go through it as well.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Sure they did.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  I'm sure she took the brunt.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 00

  Of the abuse, but it's, it can never be easy on, on the kids, especially when they're that young. Linda and her son settled into their new life in Lakeland. Tim started playing football. His coach was a guy, a 20-year-old named Joseph Mills. And Coach Joe was a role model for Tim. He regularly drove Tim and a few other players to and from football practice and games.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I had a coach like that that would pick you up and drop you off if you needed it.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Well, and it's, I think, extremely helpful, probably when you have a single mom.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Who's working her rear end off and may not be able to, you know, sometimes practices happen pretty quickly after school.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Before a lot of people even get off work. In August 1981, Linda and the boys moved into a newly constructed community of federally subsidized duplexes in Lakeland. They had only been there a few weeks when she was killed. September 3rd, 1981 was a normal Thursday for the family. Like many parents, Linda was experiencing tension with her teenage son, Jeff. So they got into an argument that day. Jeff told 48 Hours, "I remember coming home, there was nothing to eat in the house. You know how it is when you're, you know, 15, 16-year-old kid, you're mouthy.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  I got mad and I went out the door and got on my bicycle and rode 11 or 12 miles to the north side of town to go to my grandma and grandpa's house to get something to eat."

• 13:49Speaker 01

  You know, when you're hungry, you're hungry.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, you know, also 15, 16-year-old teenagers, both boys and girls, can be very mouthy.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  And they think they know everything.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  They do.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  They do. Sometimes they know a lot, but no matter how much you know, you always think you know more than what you do.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  That is true, especially as a kid.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  And I think it applies even more so to teenagers, but I think it applies to people in general.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I believe that. I think there's a lot of people that think they are smarter than they actually are.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  And there's killers, right? We talk about that a lot with killers. They think they're smarter than what they really are and that they're going to be able to get away with something that, I mean, people would look at and say, hey, why did you ever think you were going to get away with that?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  I mean, some people think they're meant so.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Some people do. Tim's coach, Joe Mills, dropped him off from football practice at 8:30 PM that night. Around 9:00 PM, Linda took Tim to a party next door. There were six or seven other people at the apartment playing cards. Tim recalled that at the party, a woman asked to read Linda's palm and told her, you're going to live a short life.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  So that's why I, you know, kind of go by those places like not stop, like when they say, hey, can we, would you like me to read your fortune? Would you like me to read your palm? I'm like, no, because what if you tell me something I really don't want to hear? Not saying I would believe you, but what if I did believe you, you know, I just don't want to know like, hey, it looks like you won't make it past tomorrow.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, that would, that would not be good.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Right. How do you get that from that?

• 15:38Speaker 00

  And you cashed out your 401K and spent it on who knows what.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  And then tomorrow comes and goes and you're still alive.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  I'm still here.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  But yeah, I mean, I guess you could hear good things or you could hear bad things. Obviously this is a very bad thing, but Linda laughed it off.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  And I think a lot of people would, right?

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Jeff's grandparents dropped him off between nine and nine 30pm. Linda and Tim came home from the party around 11. By midnight, Jeff and Linda had patched things up from their argument.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Well, you don't stay mad at your parents forever, right? You shouldn't at least.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  No.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  If you can patch it up before you go to bed, because you never want to go to bed angry.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  I've heard that.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Don't always subscribe to it, but I've heard that.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Best not to.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  It's best not to. I also think, you know, you probably try to patch it up with your single mother pretty quickly. If you just think about all the things that she's done for you and is doing for you.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Sacrifices.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe you try to patch it up. Jeff recalled the last time he spoke to his mother. She was finishing up the dishes when she went to her bedroom. Jeff said, I love you, Mom. I'll see you tomorrow. And obviously, this is going to be their last conversation. And we talk about that from time to time. Would you ever forget the last conversation that you had with your mother? When, you know, she dies at the hands of someone else?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  Or maybe she just dies naturally.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  It's just not something you're probably going to forget.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  No, you're not going to forget. And, and, and you know, for him, it's probably a good thing that he did resolve the argument, the fight. Because if he didn't, and knowing what happens, that maybe that would stick with him for the rest of his life. Like, the last thing I did was yell at my mom.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  And I never told her I was sorry.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  Even more guilt.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  It would be.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Right? If, if maybe they didn't patch things up. On the morning of September 4th, 1981, Linda was found strangled to death in her bedroom. Around 8:30am, Linda's sister Judy Butler, who lived in the same complex, walked a few doors down to have coffee.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  But Linda never answered the door. Judy started to walk back home, but she turned and saw that Linda's bedroom window screen had been removed. Judy walked over and looked inside and saw her sister's body.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, again, people discovering a dead body, you know, we've talked about it so many times. I just think it's one thing if you don't know the person, it's not going to be great. Don't get me wrong. But if it's your sister, your brother, your mom, your dad, you know, your child, somebody very close to you, that is just going to be horrific.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  That's not something you want to visualize, something you want to see, no.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Judy recalled the 48 hours. She was laying, instead of up and down on the bed, she was laying crosswalks. And at first I thought, maybe she was asleep. And then I just started screaming. And neighbors heard Judy screaming. They called the police. Officers found Linda's partially nude body with a wire coat hanger wrapped around her neck. The killer entered through her bedroom window. The sound of police radios woke up Jeff, who was sleeping on a cot in the living room. Officers told him to get dressed and go outside. Jeff recalled the 48 hours. And when I went out there, it looked like every cop in the state of Florida, news crews,

• 19:26Speaker 00

  and my Aunt Judy was out there crying. And she told me my mom had been murdered. And I just couldn't believe it.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can imagine waking up to that, just like, you know, there's people that sleep light, there's heavy sleepers, you're a heavy sleeper.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Very heavy.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  That probably sleep through all that noise.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  How you know that, let's not discuss, but.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, leave that, you know, to the side there. But you wake up to that and you step outside and you see your aunt crying and tells you that, I feel like. Your world would just end right there.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  It'd just come crashing down.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, cuz I think, you know, at that point, okay, you're 15, 16, or you know, these kids are teenagers, whatever they are, is their mom their whole world? Probably not. They've got friends, they might even have girlfriends. But again, single mom busting her, you know what, to take care of you. I'm sure the amount of love they had for her was off the charts.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Sure. And at that moment, all that would go, you know, start pouring in on you.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it definitely would. As Tim was walking out, an officer was exiting his mother's bedroom. Tim saw his mother's body on the bed.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  It'd be tough.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  It would be, and I know in a lot of cases, the police tried to shield people from, you know, seeing the body. Obviously, they didn't do it in this case, but that would be hard, very hard, not just to hear what happened, but to actually see it yourself.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  That's a picture that I don't think you're ever gonna forget.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  No, and I think one you probably would rather not have.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  If you could have avoided it, the autopsy confirmed Linda was sexually assaulted and strangled to death. DNA evidence was collected from her body and a palm print was found on the windowsill at the crime scene. Okay, so, you know, when you just take that, you're like, oh, that's great evidence.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  But in 1981, maybe not as great.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Cuz what can they really do with it?

• 21:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, you know, DNA is not really a thing yet at all. It's gonna be in a few years before DNA comes around. They can do blood typing, depending on what the evidence was, if it was semen or whatever.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  The palm print, okay, did they have databases by 1981? I'm sure they did, but, you know, how extensive and connected were they?

• 22:02Speaker 00

  Or, you know, were they more localized? And so you're, you're not searching the whole world or even the US. I, I don't know off the top of my head, you know, where it was in 1981. But obviously it was nowhere near what, um, like AFIS or whatever is today.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Mills was briefly questioned over the phone and told police that while dropping Tim off, Linda came out to the car and thanked him for giving her son a ride. He left and didn't return. He claimed he'd only met Linda once and didn't go inside the apartment. So this is, uh, you know, um, one of the kids', uh, football coach, right? Joe seems like a great guy. He takes him to practice, brings him home.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Drops him off, you know, just a, one of those, uh, seems like a, one of those coaches that goes a little bit above him.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, the extra mile, whatever you want to call it. But obviously they're, they're going to question him because he was there.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. He dropped off the boy.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  That night.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  He was there at some point. Linda's ex-husband Frank was an early person of interest, but investigators were satisfied that he was home in Alabama on the night of the murder.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  So it sounds like he had a decent alibi.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. And is it easier to have a good alibi if you're in a different state? I would say normally it is.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Depending on what the alibi actually is.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Certainly can't hurt to be in another state when something like this happens.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  No, I think the one that's always tough for people is when someone's alone, right? They live by themselves. The murder happens later at night, they're, they're home, but how do they prove it? It was just saying you're home alone, not much of an alibi.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  No, but it does put a pretty big burden on the police to also prove that you weren't.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  At home.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  I, I would say that, that is correct. Linda's current boyfriend also had a credible alibi. Police looked into the people who attended the party next door, but you know, no one was charged. I mean, these are all people that you would expect.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  The police to look into, right? The ex-husband.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  The current boyfriend, this guy Joe, because he did drop one of the kids off at the house. All these people at the party.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Cause they were hanging out there that night.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  It was not looking great right now on a potential suspect.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't think anybody's standing out. Jeff also was interviewed by Lakeland Police. They took him out of school for questioning. Jeff admitted that he and Linda had conflict sometimes, including the night before the murder. And even though he passed a polygraph, he was still accused of murdering his own mother.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Well, he did have a argument with her the night, the day of. He was inside the house when whatever, you know, when the murder happened.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I can see him being a person of interest.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  I can too, but to actually be accused of killing your mother if you didn't. You're already grieving the loss of her, her death.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  And now your, your head's got to be spinning because people are saying, or, you know, you did it. They're accusing of you.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  I think it's a tough road to go down.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, no doubt. Um, one officer even told him, you know, you got big arms and you're strong enough to put your hands around your mom's neck and kill her.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Just because he has big arms and strong hands, doesn't mean that he did it. You can say he had the tools to do it.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, he had the ability, I guess, to, to strangle her. But again, tough. And he has said that those comments still affect him.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  You know, all these years later, he told 48 Hours, who would do that to a kid? I was a 15 year old kid hurting. And to say that to me, I mean, That's always hurt.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's kind of rough, you know, to

• 26:33Speaker 00

  It is.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Jump to that, just based on the fact that he was home. He argued with her and he had the, the size to do something.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  And nobody else is jumping out.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  You know, I get it. Police accuse people all the time.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  Um, they're trying to revoke, uh, revoke, evoke and a response, right? We know you did it. We know you did it. Tell us you did it or tell us how you did it.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  They don't know you did it. They're just, you know, they're trying to get you to, to crack or say something.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  But it's like you said, it's rough, you know, cause you, you know, you want him to be able to grieve for his loss of his mom, but how can you do that when you got people coming at you?

• 27:18Speaker 00

  I think it's harder.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Right. When you're fending off all these accusations that you're the one who killed your mom. Tim was also pulled out of school and he was asked questions about his brother. Jeff's grandparents eventually told the police to stop questioning the boys and find out who really killed Linda. Two weeks later, Jeff took a second polygraph and was clear. So he passed the first one. They still accused him of murder.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  He passed the second one and they said, all right, you're clear. Again, we've talked so many times about, you know, how we feel about polygraphs, but okay, whatever it takes. Back then they, they thought a lot more of them.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  But you, you know, you passed two. You think at that point back then that, that should be a, yeah, you're good to go.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  Well, that plus there's no evidence that you did anything. All right. Maybe back off the kid a little bit unless you come up with something, uh, That that actually does point to him being guilty. The problem is the investigation slowed after this. And I think it's pretty typical. We see it quite a lot in our unsolved cases where you might have some people who really look good as persons of interest or potential suspects very early on.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Cause you've got, you know, ex husbands or boyfriends or whoever it is. You're going to look at all those people. But if they don't pan out, okay, that's when things kind of go quiet.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  If you're not getting tips or nobody's calling to say, hey, I know who the killer is. You know, where do you go from there?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it kind of gets kind of stale.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. After the murder, Jeff and Tim moved in with their grandparents. They stayed home for weeks because they were scared to go anywhere. They slept in a room with their grandmother and their grandfather stayed up all night keeping guard with a gun.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  You know, I get it, right? You don't know who did this to your mom, why they did it. And it's going to be hard to get a restful night of sleep. And the grandfather was doing what he could to make them feel safe.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would be scared too, I think. Especially if I was that young. You know, the, the one question that, that is kind of popping into my head is, okay, obviously the killer didn't harm them.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  Did he know that they were there and just had, you know, no compulsion to, to want to hurt them in any way? Or did he not know that they were there, discovered it after the fact? And that was maybe part of the, the reason why they would be so scared. Well, he's going to come for us now.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, come back for us.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Thinking maybe we saw something, maybe we know something. But, um, you know, their grandparents thought that it would be best for them to kind of go back to their normal routine. So they returned to school a few weeks later. Tim returned to football. His teammates and his coach were supportive of him. Joe Mills continued giving him runs, the games and practices. Joe would occasionally ask Tim if there were any new leads in the case. So again, he seems like he's being supportive.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  Continuing that. I, I do think, you know, Like the grandparents said, I think it's important for people to, you know, get on with their lives at a certain point.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  How long that takes, that might be different for, for everyone. But there's no doubt Linda's sons, they spend decades living in fear of this unknown killer that they called the monster.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, because he was a monster for doing what he did to their mom, but you know, for them, he just kinda lurked in the shadows because they didn't know who he was.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it would be very scary.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  It was said that, you know, the kids never got in trouble with the law, but both brothers dropped out of high school. Tim told the Lakeland Ledger, I didn't care about school. I didn't care about nothing. If my mom were alive, she'd never have put up with it.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know, as a kid that goes through something like that, I don't know how you move forward. It'd be tough to move forward, to act normal and finish school and you know, I think there'd just be a lot of depression.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Well, I, I think it's just kind of highlights how these murders impact.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  People. Now, this is family, right? It's always going to impact family, but you know, these kids were, you know, fairly young or young teenagers and it obviously impacted their lives in a negative way. There's, there's just no doubt about it. Tim later became a welder mechanic. Jeff became a truck driver. They both got married, had children and stayed in the area, but they struggled with grief and guilt for not hearing anything or helping their mom.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  And I get that, you know, I can understand that because you think about it, you're like, why didn't I hear her? Did she scream and I just didn't wake up? And if I did, maybe I could have stopped this person.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  You know, and.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Well, we talk about guilt a lot, right? And whether you should feel guilty or not, that's kind of irrelevant, you know, because it, it's, you're gonna have it. There's always gonna be that kind of those what ifs. What if I had done this? What if I had, you know, heard something? What if I went in and stopped it? I just think that's natural, but it can't be good.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  For somebody to have to live with that. Jeff told 48 Hours, I would have died that night trying to save my mom. I mean, we're right there in the house. How could you not hear something like that? So that right there, it just tells you the guilt that he's.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  That he has and probably always will have. As young adults, they called the Lakeland Police Department regularly for updates. Around the 20 year mark, Jeff and Tim met with Lakeland Detective Brad Grice, who started working the case back in 1997. And I think that would be another tough part of it, right? Year after year, you're calling, hey, what's going on with my mom's case? And there's just not much going on.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no new updates, guys.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Meanwhile, this person's still out there.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  And, okay, they haven't tried to come after you. Maybe they never will, but there's, there's still the not knowing.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, the not knowing, but there's also, you have some hope, right? You know, because thank goodness, for whatever reason, back then, they, they collected the DNA. They collected the, the print. So maybe one day, they will come, come around.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and, you know, this new detective, or not new, he'd been working the case for a while. He did know that there was DNA evidence in Linda's case file. We said it, right? DNA testing was, I don't, it was certainly limited. I don't even know if they were, if it was around.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  My recollection is 85, 86 was, was really kind of when DNA came about. But certainly in the late 90s into the early 2000s, there were significant advancements and which continue to this day. Grice had already sent DNA from the rape kit to the crime lab at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He hoped that it would finally help solve this case. By March 1999, the FDLE had developed a full DNA profile of the killer. So all they needed was a hit in the database.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  So, you know, not only had DNA advanced, right? Or what they could do, but also you have these advancements in these databases.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  CODIS, AFIS, all these different things that we talk about, these big databases that allow for, you know, fairly quick searches. But the problem that we always run into is that, you know, while DNA is great, if you don't have a match in one of these databases, or a palm print, or a fingerprint, or whatever it may be, what do you do with it?

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  It's like you're sitting around, waiting for that person to mess up and get their DNA entered into a database.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. You're just hoping that one day it happens.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  Yep. Greis took DNA samples from Jeff and Tim to clear them once and for all. And, you know, that had to be, I'm sure, a big relief for them. I mean, they knew they didn't have anything to do with it. But what it did is it, without a doubt, cleared them.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  It also.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Which changed the minds, I'm sure, of some other people.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. It also sets it up later, if and when they find the killer, that they can say, well, we, you know, the defense can't say, maybe it was the boys.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't the boys, because we tested them and it was clearly not them.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. Greis also took dozens of samples from prior persons of interest, and he submitted them to the FDLE. Even Linda's ex-husband, Frank Slaten, volunteered a sample. None were a match. And normally, normally, not always, but normally, when people volunteer their samples, they already know they didn't do it. Or else they wouldn't volunteer. But if you know you didn't do it, then you volunteer because you, you don't want to be on the radar. You want to be cleared as well.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  In September 2001, Detective Grice received a promising tip. Nearly a year after Linda's murder, a man named Jimmy Olmer pulled a 10-year-old girl through her bedroom window and attacked her, almost killing her. He was convicted and sentenced to decades in prison. Alright, that's a very nasty crime.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  It is.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Also very scary if you're the 10-year-old girl and her parents as well.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  And it does, I mean, it has some similarities?

• 38:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, and the detective, he did analyze those similarities in the cases and discovered that Jimmy Olmer was staying with a friend in Linda's apartment complex around the time of the murder.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  It's a little bit more interesting.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you have a guy who kind of has an MO, at least in one attack, of going through the window. Okay, it said that he was staying in the same apartment complex.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  Around the time, alright, we gotta check this guy out. No doubt about it. Unfortunately, Olmer died in prison five years earlier in 1996, but his DNA was on file.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Good.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  And, you know, that's one of the things about DNA, you know, at some point in time, a lot of the states, and I think everybody does it now, but if you get put in prison, they take your DNA.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  And they put it in the database. So, a lot of people have been connected to crimes just by that very thing. Grice thought he would be Linda's killer, but DNA testing proved otherwise.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Disappointing, you know, I'm sure for the family at that time, but it never surprises me, you know, I've said this before, when we do these cases, that you're looking for a killer, you don't find that killer, but you find one, two, three other really bad people in that area.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  Operator, and in this case, I mean, in the same apartment complex, at least he was staying there.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  At the same time. Yeah, it's amazing.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  As we look through, you know, we use newspapers.com for a lot of our research. And so when you start to, to search things, all kinds of different things pop up and you, you start, you can't help but start reading them and you're like, oh my gosh, this person did that. And maybe we should do a case on them too.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, been down that road.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  It, it happens a lot. Back in the eighties and nineties, the Lakeland police had no organized focus on cold cases. And detectives couldn't spare time to focus closely on Linda's case. It wasn't until 2005, the detective Grice was made the primary cold case detective. And I don't know that that's strange. You know, I think a lot of departments now, especially bigger departments, they have a cold case detective or a group of them.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  But in the, the older days, there's people that might touch a cold case every now and then, but they certainly weren't dedicated to it. Like, like some people are now.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  I kind of think it also takes a special type of detective that wants to work on a case that's basically been ran through the mill. And nobody could find anything. And now you are tasked with, you know, looking at it again and again and again, looking for any variable, any possible.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Something was missed.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and I hate to say it, but you know, obviously the chances of solving some of these older cases, they, they can't be good because some of them don't have DNA or anything. Now, we're talking about one that does. So obviously we're getting ready to talk about advancements in DNA, but if you have no DNA at all, those, those have to be really tough.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  I would think, yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  And the chances of them being solved. Have to be pretty, pretty small, but somebody's got to do it, right? Somebody's got to keep these alive and keep working them. As leader of the cold case unit, Detective Greis worked with the FBI, who continuously ran the DNA sample through all federal databases, but there was still no match. And that's my thought is I don't know how often they do it, but on some of these cold cases, just at intervals, right? They have to run the search.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  Again, to see if now there's a match.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Do we have it now?

• 42:22Speaker 00

  This person got picked up, they got charged, they got convicted and now they're,

• 42:28Speaker 00

  their DNA is in the database or it's in there for some other reason.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  You know, whatever. Greis began to worry the suspect was deceased. And I get that, right? Quite a bit of time is, you know, is gone by. We don't know how old this person was when they committed the murder.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  So the more time that goes by, the greater the chances that that person is no longer alive. In September 2006, Jeff and Tim offered an $8,000 reward for information. On top of the $2,000 Crime Stoppers reward, Jeff worked overtime and Tim used proceeds from the sale of his house to contribute to the reward. And man, that's amazing.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  It is.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  You know, just think it shows you how badly they wanted the murder of their mother solved. They wanted justice for her.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  They want someone to pay the price for what they did.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Detective Greis ultimately retired in 2015 and was deeply disappointed he had not found the killer. I think that goes back to what we were saying, right? How hard are some of these cold cases to work on? I think some of these cold case detectives end up retiring with a large number of them still unsolved. And that has to be frustrating.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  I'm sure it haunts them too, you know, some of them, you know.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  You say haunts them?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Haunt.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  Almost sounded like you said handsome.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Haunts them.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  That man is very handsome.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Very handsome.

• 44:01Speaker 00

  No, I'm sure it does.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  You know, I kinda, a lot of times I reference True Detective, right? I love that series and especially the first and the third season. Probably my two favorites, but in the third season, you know, that case went very, very cold. And you kinda got to see throughout the years, how it haunted those guys.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  Who had worked on it. In November 2018, investigators looked into using genetic genealogy, which compares DNA evidence to public genealogy databases. In June 2019, genetic genealogist C.C. Moore got involved in Linda's case. She uploaded the DNA to Jedmatch and constructed the family tree. She found three genetic networks that pointed to one immediate family. There was only one son in the family, meaning he had to be the suspect.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  And I mean, people listening will recognize the name C.C. Moore. She has been absolutely instrumental in this genetic genealogy. I mean, there's a lot of other people that have as well, but her name comes up a lot. After decades of no answers, Moore identified the suspect in just one weekend. And how amazing is that?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  It's awesome.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  I mean, it just shows you what this type of technology can do. It does something in one weekend that investigators hadn't been able to do in almost 40 years. She determined that the suspect was Tim's former football coach, Joseph Mills. He was 58 years old and living in Kathleen, Florida, about an hour from Lakeland. Now, authorities wanted to be certain, right? Before they arrested Mills and notified Linda's family, investigators noted in the case file that Mills was interviewed the day after the murder by phone, but never face to face, which indicated he never was really considered a suspect.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Cause obviously if he was, they'd have brought him in. They'd have done a real interview, not just a phone interview.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  Cause to me, those are two very different things.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Sure it is.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  When you can't see the person.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  You don't, you can't see their body language. You know, are they sweating? Do they look up and to the right every time they're right before they answer every question or to the left? I forget which one it is, but you know what I mean? In his interview, Mills acknowledged that he drove Tim home on September 3rd, which we talked about. In 1984, he was convicted of grand theft for forging a will. He never went to jail, but his prints were taken. In August 2019, investigators compared his prints to the palm print from the crime scene, and it was a match. So again, you always hate

• 47:04Speaker 00

  to kind of Monday morning quarterback these investigations.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  But it's hard not to think, man, they really should have brought this guy in.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  There really was what? We talk about three main persons of interest.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  There was, yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  The ex, the current boyfriend, and this guy Joseph Mills, who was there that night. He said, well, I never went in the house and I'd only met her one time.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was looked at more of a, this is a really good guy, you know, picking up and bring him home, the son and other kids from football practice, you know?

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Why would he have anything to do with this?

• 47:45Speaker 00

  But they're closing in on him.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Investigators needed a fresh DNA sample to confirm Mills was the killer. They followed him for several weekends, trying to catch him discarding a cup or tissue with no luck. They then decided to search his trash. They found a used piece of medical adhesive tape and sent it to the FDLE crime lab for testing. You know, this also fascinates me. When they get somebody's DNA.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Using like all these strange methods, whether it's following people and they they drank out of a cup and they threw it in the trash can and people swoop in, they grab it with gloves on, they put it in a bag. In this case, they're going through, you know, his trash.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  I know that you and your wife both hate when I come over here because when we eat, I take anything I use back with me.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Right. You won't use our silverware. You have your own plastic stuff that you bring and you wrap it all up nice and neat. It's very Hannibal Lecter like. I don't know what's going on.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  You know, at the end of the night, when I'm done, I'll take this upstairs. I have my own little spot in the one closet where I keep a nice container of bleach and I pour it all over this and then I'll leave it here to run through the dishwasher.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  That's what I do. Is it strange? Maybe some people might think so.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  A little bit. I just think, that's Gibby. My wife and I joke about it all the time. That's just Gibby.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  I'm just trying not to leak my DNA here.

• 49:22Speaker 00

  So they got this medical adhesive tape. They send it off to the lab. While they're waiting for the results, investigators started looking into Mills's personal life, learning that he was married to the same woman and he lived in the same place for decades. He owned a cleaning service and worked as a truck driver. He had adult children and grandchildren. 11 days later, the crime lab confirmed it was Joseph Mills's DNA found at the 1981 crime scene.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  What a good feeling that has to be.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  It does. I'm just thinking, all right, what are you thinking if you're the the kids? They're not kids now. They're adults, but you know, I'm sure.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  This is something that for at least Tim, I think it was Tim, right? That he was taking back and forth or Jeff, I forget which one. But that person had to look at him as almost like a father figure.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, or bigger brother or something.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, older brother, uncle, you know, guy just helping out. So to find out that it was his DNA.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  That just had to be like a gut punch.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  It had to hurt.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  On December 4th, police went to Mills's home for an interview. He claimed he didn't know anything about the crime and didn't have any relationships with athletes' parents. He only made small talk when he dropped kids off and he said he had never been inside the Slaten home. And what does that mean?

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Saying what me?

• 50:56Speaker 00

  Well, but what does it mean when you say you've not been inside the home? Well, it's gonna make it really tough when they find your DNA in it.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Sure is. You kind of boxed yourself in a bad position.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  But he has to stick with that because he did say that in the very beginning.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  He did.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  When he was first interviewed as well. On December 12th, 2019, Joseph Mills was arrested for murder, sexual battery and burglary with assault and battery. At first, he said he didn't recall going into Linda's home. Detectives told Mills they had overwhelming evidence placing him inside Linda's bedroom. So not only did, did you go in the home, they have you in Linda's bedroom. Mills eventually admitted that when he dropped him off that night, Linda extended an open invitation to come to her residence for a good time.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Oh, hey, come back later for a good time.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  This is according to ABC.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  In the early hours of September 4th, he returned to the home and entered through an unlocked bedroom window. He claimed that Linda asked him to engage in wild sex.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  I find it strange when someone says, I've never been in that home. I don't remember ever being in that home. And then all of a sudden. Now he remembers, oh yeah, you know what? She hit on me. She said, come back. I climbed through this window. I don't know if that's the window you're talking about. And she wanted to have some wild sex. I remember all of it now.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  But that's the whole thing, right? People changing their stories.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  It's, it's fascinating to me because they get boxed in. They realize that police have evidence that refutes what they've said. So they have to pivot. They have to come up with something new. What do they come up with? Sometimes it's, I think oftentimes it's outlandish and, and this one is as well. According to court documents, Mills stated upon entering Linda's bedroom, Linda Slaten already had a wire hanger around her neck as she lay on the bed. He stated that he twisted the wire hanger around her neck tighter and tighter while engaging in sexual intercourse with Linda until she lost consciousness.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  So she said, come by later, whenever you can. I'll be waiting for you and I'm going to lay on this bed. Who knows how long, but I'm going to take this wire coat hanger and put it around my neck in hopes that you will come back and then I can give you further instructions on how I want you to twist it.

• 53:42Speaker 00

  Not knowing whether you're going to come back or not.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  I know it. It seems so outlandish, but this is what he's calling the wild sex.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  Right?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  He said he then left through the window. However, the crime scene didn't indicate that it was consensual sex or any type of consensual sexual encounter. There was evidence of a foreign object being used in the rape. Linda had lacerations consistent with a struggle to get the wire hanger off her neck. So detectives believed that Mills snuck in through the bedroom window while Jeff was at his grandparents and Linda and Tim were at the party next door. They believed he was hiding in the closet waiting for her. Linda said, good night to her kids, walked into her bedroom and was attacked.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  On December 19th, 2019, police made the shocking announcement that Linda's son's former football coach had been charged with murder. Tim said at a news conference as quoted by ABC, "I saw the crime scene. It's still burned in my brain today."

• 54:49Speaker 01

  And we talked about that, right? We, we, we, we knew once he saw that crime scene, when they walked, walked him past it, there's no way he was going to forget that.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  No, there's, there's no scrubbing that image out of your head.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  Your partially clothed mother dead. Just seeing that as you walk by, you're never getting rid of it. Jeff also said at the time, "It's been rough on me my whole life, not knowing who it was, always being scared to death. I was friends with him, always looking over our shoulder." Tim noted that Mills continued driving him home from football after the murder, saying, "I trusted this man. He was the last person in my brain I thought was gonna do it."

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, shame on Mills for continuing to do this, knowing what he did to these kids' mom, right? I mean, it's kind of strange that he still kept that up. And then we also know from earlier conversations that we had that he would ask the boys, you know, or specifically, you know, Tim, "Hey, any suspects?"

• 55:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was fishing for information about the case. But my thought is, would it look strange if he all of a sudden stopped doing it? And maybe so. Maybe he thought that would put him on the radar more if he all of a sudden stopped doing the, um, the things he'd been doing with driving.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  I just think he wanted to stay close to the case.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, that might've been the, the reason for it too. Over two years later, on February 9th, 2022, Joseph Mills changed his plea to guilty at a hearing and was sentenced to life without parole. The Slaten brothers and other family members told the press, they wanted to trial because of the possibility of the death penalty.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  That's how much they hated this guy.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Well, you know, one, he did a horrible, terrible thing. The fact that he got away with it for such a long time and enjoyed his life while their mom never got to. Yeah, I get it. I, I, I would want you to burn in hell, buddy.

• 57:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, no doubt about it.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  The family was given the opportunity to address him at sentencing. Jeff told him, I hate you. You can't die and burn in hell fast enough for me.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  I don't blame him one bit. Tim also said, I hope when you're in prison, things happen to you. Bad things. I saw the crime scene. I saw what you did and then you act like my friend. I rode in the car with you.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  I hope you get the worst cellmate ever, and I hope that that cellmate abuses you every waking minute of your day.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, that's what he's saying, right?

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:38Speaker 00

  Really, we all know what bad things can happen in prison and he's hoping they all do.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  The brothers asked Mills why he killed Linda. Jeff asked, why, Joe? Why'd you take my mama? I don't know why. You can't tell me why. Why did you have to murder my mama? Mills remained expressionless and he didn't respond. Not shocking.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  Jeff said he thought he would die without knowing he, who killed his mother, adding, we was scared to death because of you, man. Always looking over my shoulder, scared to death, sleeping with a, a switchblade knife under my pillow, sleeping with. Linda's sister Judy Butler also appeared in court and described finding Linda's body. She said, as I screamed, my eyes scanned the scene. Joe, how could you do that? Do you have any soul? Do you have any remorse? And to be honest with you, Gibbs, I don't think a lot of these people do.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 58:37Speaker 00

  I really don't.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 58:38Speaker 00

  Tim said Mills was the last person on his radar noting, I got a picture of our football team. And him standing right behind me in the picture, been in my house this whole time and never had a clue. He had a picture of this guy in his house the entire time.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Well, you know, probably kind of, I hate to say it, but you know, part of his life, probably idolizes guy in some form.

• 59:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  You know, and hates that he ever, probably even did that. And, um, you know, it, it haunted them because they didn't know who did this. But when you get the answer to who did it, I'm sure it's a different type of haunt.

• 59:17Speaker 00

  It is because now you know who it is. You also knew that you knew them. You hung out with them after the fact.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  When he was given a chance to speak, Mills told the court, I'm a good person. I'm not that person that they're painting me out to be.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  See, that's complete bullshit. And people say that you are a terrible person.

• 59:36Speaker 00

  But they say it all the time.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  And, and maybe he was a good person at that point in his life. I don't know. But it doesn't change the fact that he killed this one.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  In 1981, doesn't change it at all.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Killed somebody and you weren't man enough to confess up to it, to give these two boys some peace in their life. You played this charade. So you know what? You are not a good person, never was after that fact. I don't know what you did before that, but up to that, right after that point, nothing good about you.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. He, he tried to say that, you know, he owned a successful business. He gave people chances. So I don't know, Gibbs, as we wrap this one up, the Slaten brothers told 48 Hours that they have comfort. Knowing Joseph Mills will die in prison, but they're still angry that he never took responsibility for what he did. And they spent so many years free while they were the ones who suffered without their mom.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Again, I just still pissed because he says he's a good guy. He, he feels that he knows he did something bad. And he's trying to redeem himself by, well, I've helped the community, I've done this and that. The one thing you needed to do to try to redeem anything was to go back to the boys and say, it was me, I did it, I need to pay the price for that, and I'm sorry, I took advantage of you guys as well. But he never did that. He wanted to do this thing where,

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Of course, he's not gonna do that. He's gonna lose his freedom.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. To me, he's just another piece of shit.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I get it. Tim said in his interview, he lived his whole life, he raised his family, you know, he had a good life. And I think that does rub family members the wrong way. Obviously, he killed their mom, so that's, that's gonna do it. But the fact that he spent, whatever it was, 40 years, living his life and having kids and grandkids and all of that while, you know, their life went sideways.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  You know, after the, the murder, I get it. I understand why they're upset. No doubt about it. But terrible guy.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Terrible what happened to Linda.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel for the boys.

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too. But that's it for another episode of True Crime All The Time. So for Mike,

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  And Gibby.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.