29-year-old Mary Davis, a married mother of two, worked at a hardware store in Lexington, North Carolina in the 1980's. On May 7, 1987, Mary stepped out for lunch and never returned. Mary's body was found the next day behind a local grocery store by family members during a search for her. She had been raped and strangled. Immediately, suspicion fell on her husband and her boyfriend that she was having an extramarital affair with. This cloud hung over them for more than three decades until the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation cracked the case by testing DNA that had been expertly preserved by the Lexington Police. A suspect, Russell Grant Woods, was identified, and even though he had died a decade prior, the information gave the heartbroken family information they desperately needed to put their lives back in order. In this episode, we talk to the SBI about how the preservation of evidence and advanced technology are solving more and more cold cases.

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July 11, 1997, started out like any other day for Raleigh Police investigator Patrick Niemann. He was riding with 35-year-old Raleigh Police Detective Paul Hale, who had just been promoted to investigations 5 days earlier. They approached a car at an apartment complex that they believed contained a potential witness in a murder case. 19-year-old Kwame Mays was in the back seat. He fired his 9mm handgun killing Hale. Niemann returned fire, wounding Mays. Mays was arrested on two counts of first-degree murder-one in Hale's death, and one in the homicide of Ralph Walker who had been shot in the head earlier that morning while driving his pickup truck. In May of 1998, the jury convicted Mays in the murder of Walker, but deadlocked in the murder of Hale. Mays was retried and convicted in September 1998 of killing Hale. Mays faced the possibility of the death penalty, but instead, was sentenced to life in prison. Patrick Niemann went on to have a long career in law enforcement, one that included helping other officers who had experienced critical incidents emotionally process what they had been through. He has never sat down for a media interview about the case, until now. In this powerful conversation, Patrick describes the shooting, the trauma that followed, and ultimately, his will to move forward in large part to honor Paul Hale's legacy of service.

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When Jerri Williams was sworn in as an FBI agent in 1982, she was one of just 23 Black female agents out of 7000 total. To say she is a trailblazer is an understatement. For more than two decades she uncovered corruption and investigated major crimes. She went on to be the spokesperson for the FBI in the Philadelphia area. In her fifties, Jerri blazed another trail. She became a podcaster at a time when most people didn't even know what a podcast was. Today, her show, FBI Retired Case File Review, has posted more than 400 episodes and has millions of downloads. She features the stories of retired FBI agents as they share the details of their most compelling cases. Jerri is also a successful author and a doting grandmother, not to mention an amazing person. In this bonus episode, we delve into Jerri's unique career path and some of her most compelling cases.

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