On a bitterly cold night in December 1979, eighteen-year-old Michelle Martinko never made it home from the Westdale Mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When her body was found in the family car, brutally stabbed, her murder stunned the community and left investigators scrambling for answers.

Despite intensive efforts — from blood typing and fingerprint comparisons to chasing down countless leads — the case went cold, haunting her family and the city for nearly four decades.

In this episode, we retrace Michelle’s final hours, the crime scene evidence of the era, and the long, frustrating investigation that kept her story alive but frozen in time until the breakthroughs of modern forensic science began to change everything.

To read about this case and see the resources used to create this episode, visit our Blog Here.

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