Knock Knock

This is Knock Knock, the unsolved murders of Betty Jones and Catherine Crickler. My name is Jason B. Jones. I was 10 years old. The phone rang. Something was wrong, very wrong. That call was about my grandmother. She was dead. And not just dead, but murdered. I will never forget that night. Because it was September 3rd, 1990, was the night that I was introduced to evil. It was a very unusual crime for our community and, of course, a very brutal crime. It would take me 27 years to finally get up the courage to ask all the questions about that night. I'm kind of freaking out a little bit. I'm not going to lie. It was important for me to see where it happened as I was documenting this and trying to understand it. It was two girls hanging out, watching TV, getting ready to sleep. Being here, I feel like I understand how scary that would have been. With the knock on a door. Betty goes and answers the door. And the guy comes in and immediately says, Catherine starts hearing screaming and knows something's wrong with Betty. And then he attacks Betty. And then he kills her. He immediately went toward Catherine. Raped her. Strangled her. Thought he killed her. I could hardly wrap my head around it. The fact that there was somebody that had actually committed a murder. And then to just rape my grandmother so nonchalantly. You know, and just leave her to die. I miss her. What was done in that house was as bad as anything Jack the Ripper ever did. Standing in front of this house today, 28 years later, what's it like for you, knowing that you still don't have your man? It's frustrating. There's no doubt about it. I always assumed that Betty and Catherine's case was cold and dormant. What I learned is that Sergeant Lott is no ordinary police officer. Even though I'm a dinosaur, I'm constantly getting on the internet and looking at science. Parabon, what they do is they take the DNA and they developed a DNA facial recognition of the killer. We're able to give them a prediction of what that person looked like. So it's essentially a genetic witness. You remember the moment when the picture revealed itself on your computer screen? It's like, now I know what you look like. I'm going to get you. Even as a child, I learned what the monsters fear. Whether imaginary or real, monsters today still fear the light. When we started this podcast, I thought that real answers would be years or decades off. Never in a million years did I think that we would get answers so quickly. jason jones has a job he loves he designs album covers and produces music videos i think something like this in nashville but for more than a year he had a second passion he had a podcast a dark podcast i will never forget that night and it was personal i remember waking up in the middle of the night sweating jason launched his podcast in september 2017. it had an odd title knock knock it is about a particularly vicious crime that had been unsolved for nearly 30 years i can't imagine the terror that betty and catherine felt when they realized behind that knock-knock stood a monster for jason this was more than just a murder tale it's the story of his family betty jones was his step-grandmother i think that there was this this hum of fear throughout our family after betty died it was labor day 1990 jason was 10 years old and living outside of houston that's when his family got that phone call telling them betty had been murdered in starkville mississippi were you scared oh yeah i knew enough to know that there was someone out there that killed my grandmother and they may want to kill me too jason's parents bill and colleen jones struggled to explain it all to him and his younger brother simon do you remember the words you used uh we don't know why but god called betty home and they'll see her again someday betty came into their family late in life she was a widow when she married jason's grandfather he already had two grown children including bill jason's father she was wonderful she took us in as her own children you know and was just warm and loving and just an angel to me sadly betty's marriage to jason's grandfather did not last long my grandfather passed away from a heart attack just a few years into their marriage although jason only knew his step-grandmother for a few years when he was young she left her mark she was the lady that came over and took us to nice restaurants and smelled really good that's that's how i remembered her as a 10 year old um she was the grandmother that was really into baseball which i don't know for a little boy having a grandmother that's into baseball was pretty cool betty jones was more than just a baseball fan she was a team mom for the mississippi state university bulldogs in starkville her job was to keep the players from getting homesick and here's the pitch and wanting to leave he's right he's safe betty's sister ann mcquarter says betty often brought the players chewing gum to keep them from other vices now honey i want you to be sure and chew that gum now don't you get into that tobacco she had a real connection with his baseball team she did but she had a connection with any age person catherine kriegler was one of the people to whom betty felt connected betty was 65 catherine was 81 a retired school teacher she was taking some new medication and betty volunteered to keep her company in case she fell ill what was the basis of their friendship church julia kriegler holt known as juki says her grandmother and betty were active members of the first presbyterian church which was right next door betty was a church elder catherine sang in the choir and she played the piano with betty at home i think that was her dream for me to be a pianist that didn't happen but but i took lessons for her to this day juki has warm memories of her grandmother's house catherine raised two children there and it was a gathering spot for extended family this is me um and there's my granny her house was a quaint little house i never in a million years would ever feel scared in that location that night in 1990 started out peacefully enough the two friends were just settling in after supper time but that changed around 9 00 pm they had taken baths they had their gowns on they were getting ready to watch a ball game when somebody knocked on the door the monster came to the door david lindley is now retired but he was the lead investigator at the time he says when betty opened the back door an intruder forced his way in as best we can tell entered into a physical confrontation with her and she tried to defend herself catherine kriegler was all but helpless she was an amputee and was in her wheelchair in the bathroom when she heard betty calling for help she tried to see what was going on and the attacker appeared he ended up making her go into her bedroom and told her that he did not want to hurt her like he had hurt her friend he in fact did rape miss kriegler And he left the residence sometime shortly thereafter, we surmise. Catherine was left bleeding. She had fractured ribs and a broken hip. But she somehow managed not only to survive, but to call for help. Ms. Crigler was able to rally her strength. She couldn't get to her wheelchair, so she took a pillow, used it to kind of glide or slide into the kitchen area where there was another phone, and she was able to reach up. What are your names, Ms. Crigler? Yes, today there was one single boy, young man. And he went in the front room where my friend was. He came back in with his hands all bloody. And then he reached me. I know what I did. It's just terrible. Catherine was rescued by EMS, but in the living room with the baseball game. With the baseball game still playing on the TV, Betty was dead on the floor. Her throat was slashed. She died trying to save Catherine. She was a fighter. And I know that when this guy started attacking her, Betty fought back like a wild cat. Betty's death left a hole in her family's heart. And everyone in the small university town was on edge. As it turns out, the police wouldn't have to look far for a good suspect. There was one right next door to Catherine's house. ♪♪♪ To look at these pictures, it makes me sad. Even now, it is hard for Juki Kriegler-Holt to think about the details of what happened to her grandmother, Catherine. How horrible it is to know that at the very last part of her life something so horrible would happen. But Juki is still amazed by the courage and the strength her grandmother summoned after she was attacked to get help for herself and her friend, Juki. But Juki is still amazed by the courage and the strength The only advantage I had over those guys was DNA. That's because when the crime was committed in 1990, not much was known about forensic DNA. But with new knowledge and new technology, Lott knew he had potentially critical evidence because doctors had extracted DNA from Katherine Kriegler using a sexual assault kit. They may not have known it at the time, but that was a key moment in this case. There's no question about it. That is the key to the gate. Police kept the evidence, and in 2005, Lott sent it to a lab. What did that lab do for you with this evidence? They got a semen-based DNA profile. With the DNA profile of the killer in hand, Lott's first order of business involved an old, that blonde-haired, blue-eyed man who was partying next door to Katherine's house. What is this? This contains the original kit of the number one suspect that supposedly did this crime. Lott had the killer's DNA profile compared to the DNA of the young man, who many in Starkville still believed, had been responsible. What did it show? Not a match. Not a match. Right. The one-time prime suspect was almost certainly not the man who killed Betty Jones and Katherine Kriegler. But in 1990, there was a lot of pressure to arrest that man. And Lott believes if he had been arrested, he would have been convicted and executed. Has this case changed the way you feel about the death penalty? I'll say it this way: I used to be 100% pro-death penalty. Now? Now, I think it would have to be on a case-by-case basis. Sounds like a shift to me. Yes, because he could have been put to death for a crime he didn't commit. Lott went on to test the DNA of 60 other potential suspects. None was a match. There was also no match in CODIS, the National DNA Database, and no evidence of violent criminals. I had resolved that it would probably never be solved. Betty Jones' sister, Ann McWhorter. That I would go to my grave without knowing who did this. Hours away in Tennessee, Jason Jones and his family, who had grown distant from Betty's over time, knew little about the investigation. Because no one was calling us. We were the extended family. And Jason says over the years his family hardly ever spoke about Betty's death. It becomes this taboo subject where people don't really disclose information because it's hard to talk about. But now, as an adult, Jason was more curious than ever. I wanted to know what had happened, and so I googled it and nothing came up. It was shocking to me that I couldn't find information about this case or my grandmother's murder, or her life, or anything. He had questions about Betty, but he had even more about Katherine Krigler. I don't think I knew the name Krigler, to be honest. You didn't know the name of the other person? Yeah, I don't think so. But in August 2005, when Jason was getting married, there was a huge, almost unbelievable development. His fiancée's mother held a bridal shower and invited some of her friends. Stories frequently come out. But not like this story. I was busy playing mother of the groom, and so I was introduced to a lot of people that day. Jason's mother Colleen was chatting with a young art teacher when they discovered that even though they were both in Nashville, they had a Mississippi connection. I told her that I had married a guy that had gone to high school and college in Starkville. And she said, "Starkville? My grandparents lived there." And she said, "Starkville? My grandparents lived there." What's your husband's last name? What were your in-laws' last names? And as soon as I said Betty Jones, it was just like she had seen a ghost. And I was it. Standing before Colleen Jones was Katherine Krigler's granddaughter. And I was it. And I was it. And I was it. tell the color of your eyes, your hair, and your skin. The codes also tell your face shape and even if you have freckles, and how many. - And we've trained our computers to recognize those genetic signatures. And then if we run a crime scene sample from an unknown person through that model and the computer recognizes one of those signatures, it can say there's a high probability that this came from someone with blue eyes. And then as you add each trait, you end up with a smaller and smaller group of people. - If I'm a cop looking for a needle in a haystack, seems to me you've just taken away a lot of hay. - Absolutely, it is extraordinarily helpful with eliminating a lot of suspects and focusing an investigation. - Parabon showed us how they came up with the composite in the Starkville case. - We've got the predicted face shape, we've got the predicted skin color on there, but we don't have the predicted eye color, predicted hair color. - But this process is part science and part art. - This is sort of a blank canvas. - Exactly. - To use an artistic analogy. - Tom Shaw is a forensic artist who interprets the computer's conclusions and makes the image more lifelike. The computer had concluded that this killer would most likely have some freckles, brown hair, and light blue eyes. - And so then I can go to that kind of collection of light blue eyes and pick out, "Okay, this is the one we like." - We're not producing a photograph of that person. We don't know the person's age, their weight, anything that they've done with their hair or tattoos, scars, things like that, but we can give a description, which is something that these detectives didn't have before. - In late August, 2018, just a few days shy of the 28th anniversary of the Labor Day murders, Parabon sent Sergeant Lott two composites. One showed an ID. It showed an idea of what the suspect looked like back in 1990. - That's him at the time of the murder. - And a second one showed what he might look like now. - When you look at this picture, what goes through your mind? - Where are you? Now, how am I gonna find you? - But other experts at Parabon were using another method to find the suspect, genetic genealogy. - So in order to find genetic genealogy, we're uploading it to GEDmatch, which is a public database of people who have explicitly chosen to publicly share their DNA for other people to search and have explicitly consented to law enforcement usage. - There are roughly one million people on GEDmatch.com, all searching for family members. The DNA of the Starkville killer was compared to the DNA of all those people to see if one of them might be, at least, an innocent relative. - And they found something. - In this case, we were able to find some good matches. These are people who genetically match our unknown subject, and we're trying to figure out, based on knowing approximately how much DNA is shared, can we build their family trees and figure out who this unknown person is? - Genetic genealogy helped police catch the alleged Golden State Killer, who's believed to have murdered 15 people and raped 50 women across California in the '70s and '80s. So, Lott hopes it can help him, too. - I've been obsessed with it, looking at it to see if I've got the genetic genealogy yet. - The Jones and Krigler family's sensed investigators were on the verge of something big. - And I've just felt an electricity about, you know, that this is gonna be solved sooner than later. - And they were right. - An arrest made in Starkville in the 1990 Labor Day murder. - I was asleep here at home and about 4:00 a.m., I received a text from Sergeant Bill Lott. He said, "We've got him." It wasn't very eloquent. I believe my exact quote was, "You're me." ♪ ♪ - Over the course of this season, we've unpacked bits and pieces that impact Betty and Katherine's life. - In the summer of 2018, as Jason Jones was completing his podcast series. - We've seen setbacks and huge opportunities for moving this case forward. - He was hoping, among other things, that a listener would come forward with information about the murder. A listener did come forward, but with a completely unexpected story. - We got a message from a girl by the name of Betty Hong. Her story was hard to believe, honestly. - What was it? - Betty emailed us and let us know that she was actually named for my grandmother. - Betty Hong told Jason that in the '80s, her family, having escaped the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, was sponsored by Betty Jones and several other members of the First Presbyterian Church to come live in Starkville. Betty's mother, Kim Hong, says her family came to the U.S. with their freedom, but very little else. - Back then, I come, I don't have nothing. I only have two bags. - You came with just two bags? - Two small bags, yeah. - It was before Betty Hong was born, but she says Betty Jones took care of her family and helped them get settled in America. - She truly impacted my parents' lives, directly by clothing them, bringing them out to eat, and did it out of love. And we got to come to America and have this American dream. So it's really, Betty Jones is like one of those angels that lived upon us, but now that she's passed, I feel like she's someone who watches over me. - What is the emotion you're feeling now? - It's this burst of just thankfulness. Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. - In the summer of 2018, 48 Hours brought Jason and Betty Hong together for the first time. - We're like family. - We're totally family, yeah. - The Hong story became part of the seventh and last episode of the podcast that aired in August, 2018. - My name is Jason B. Jones. - But although the podcast had its finale, it had no finality because still no one knew who killed Betty and Katherine. - What I would hope is that if we did a season two of Knock Knock, that it would be about the conviction and the trial of the person who killed Betty and Katherine. - And just weeks after that interview with Jason, it began to look like the story would have the ending he wanted after all. Because finally, Sergeant Bill Lott had a suspect. What was it that led you to this guy? - Genetic genealogy. - Lott's faith in science paid off. A genetic genealogist at Parabon had completed weeks of detailed work building family trees based on those DNA matches on GEDmatch.com. And she gave Lott a name. - It seemed surreal. It didn't, it seemed like I was dreaming. It wasn't a dream. It was real. - This was Lott's suspect, 51-year-old Michael Wayne Devon. Devon is a twice-divorced father of three. He'd worked in construction and farming most of his life, and he was being held in jail a few hours away on drug charges. - Why wasn't his DNA in the national database? - He had no prior criminal history till, until recently. He's never served time or anything like that. No, he's not. - Lott believed Devon had features similar to the ones depicted in the Parabon composite, but he needed to make sure he had the right man. So he sent a cigarette butt that Devon discarded while in custody on the drug charges to a lab for DNA testing. The result? The DNA on the cigarette was a match to the DNA taken from, from Katherine Krigler the night of the attack. - You went up and got him that day, that Saturday? - Oh yeah, it was time. - It was time. - It was time. - On October 6th, 2018, 28 years after the crime, Betty and Katherine's suspected attacker was brought in shackles to Starkville, Mississippi. - Do you have anything to say at all to their families? or about your arrest. Michael Devon was charged with Betty Jones' murder and the rape and sexual battery of Katherine Krigler. It's been a long, long journey, but I would do it all over again. And later that day, Lott visited the man who had worked the case first. Good to see you, my friend. Retired police chief David Lindley. Congratulations. Congratulations to you. You did a lot of great work. I just finished it. Investigators were finally able to give the victims' families the news they wanted, Betty Jones' sister, Ann McWhorter. I looked at her picture this morning for the first time in a long time. The tears just flowed down my face. It was just, bet I miss you, even 28 years later. Did you think that you would see this day? No. You can't believe it, because 28 years is a very long time. But there was a bit of excitement there that it's finally done. He's finally been found. Jason Jones was trying to absorb the news so soon after his podcast's final episode. But his reaction was not as simple as he expected. I thought that I would feel either happy or mad, but the conversation. The feelings are a lot more complicated than that. I feel a sadness towards him, that he was a guy that made a series of terrible choices that resulted in taking something away from us that was irreplaceable. Juki Kriegler-Holt wasn't quite as understanding. He looked like a man to me that probably had no empathy whatsoever. He could care less about anything he did to anybody. Did I feel sorry for him? No. We may now know who knocked on the door that Labor Day night and attacked Betty Jones and Katherine Kriegler. But even if this case has been closed, there are still some questions that remain open. Why did this. Why did this guy choose Betty and Katherine? What were the circumstances that made him do this? And I know that it won't help and I know that it won't make anything better, but I think the storyteller in me just needs to know what the end of that story is in order to be able to put it away. In 2020, Michael Devon pleaded guilty to killing Betty Jones. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Paramount+ is your story. Streaming home for another unbelievable season of the NFL on CBS. And here he goes. Every Sunday. Touchdown! The most anticipated games. Lamar going deep. Oh, what a catch! Football's biggest stars. That's old-fashioned Josh Allen football. And all the unforgettable moments. There it is! This is history! 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