The Last 5 Percent

The search for Chelsea Yasser's killer is far from over.

In the final episode of The White Whale: The Chelsea Yasser Story, Detective Jason McDonald takes listeners inside the ongoing investigation, sharing the innovative techniques, new forensic technology and relentless detective work driving the case forward nearly a decade after Chelsea's murder.

From advancements in DNA analysis and forensic genetic genealogy to an unprecedented search through thousands of historical vehicle records, this episode explores what it takes to solve a cold case and why the Aurora Police Department refuses to give up. Because every victim deserves justice, every family deserves answers and every lead is worth pursuing.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Cold cases are unique because they're unsolved. They've been unsolved for a long time. A lot of people have looked at them sometimes and not been able to solve them. I'm drawn to cold cases because they're very challenging. It's like having a big puzzle that's 95% completed handed to you, and you gotta find those last final five pieces that fit. And sometimes they exist and you just have to find them. Sometimes they don't exist, and you have to get creative with new technology to try to make those pieces.

SPEAKER_05 0:41

That's Jason McDonald, the Aurora Police Department's only dedicated cold case detective. He's been with the agency for over 22 years. Through the last five years, he's been assigned to the major crime homicide unit, four of which he spent investigating unsolved murders and missing persons cases. It's no small task. APD has approximately 150 cold cases dating to the 1970s.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

I remember when I was interviewed for this position to be the cold case detective, one of the questions asked to me was are you going to be okay with all the failures that come with working cold cases, not being able to solve cases? Will that frustrate you? Um because I come from units where you have a high solvability rate, you're filing cases a lot, and there's successes there, right? And that makes you feel good. Um so I had to explain that, yeah, I'm okay with having failures and not being able to solve cases. I like that challenge of trying to take a case that nobody else has been able to solve and try to solve it.

SPEAKER_05 1:38

During his time with the Major Crime Homicide Unit, Detective McDonald has cleared about a dozen cold cases, including five where criminal charges were filed. His caseload generally encompasses numerous unsolved investigations. He worked simultaneously, but for more than three years he's been focused on one case in particular, Chelsea Yasser's 2016 homicide. You've heard from Detective McDonald before. During the intros of our previous episodes, saying the Aurora Police Department's cold case motto is we will never forget, meaning the men and women of APD never stop working until our victims and their families receive justice. That's especially true in this case. The work Detective McDonald has put into this investigation is nothing short of innovative. Not only through his outside of the box thinking, but also through his ability to develop what some might consider non-traditional law enforcement partnerships. In our final episode, we're going to hear from Detective McDonald, who shares details about what he's done to advance this case and where this investigation is headed in the future. Welcome back to APD Presents The White Whale, the Chelsea Yesser Story.

SPEAKER_10 2:42

We have cases going back to the mid-70s. If there's a possibility of doing something with a case, we're going to work it. We're going to do it for the victim, we're going to do it for the victim's family. And it's important to all of us to try and solve these cases.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Depending on the complexity of the homicide, you may end up staying there for 20, 30 hours, working straight through. You basically keep working until you exhaust all the leads.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

This case of Chelsea Yasser is a unique one because it was just such a brutal murder, and it was captured on video, and we know some things about the suspect, like the vehicle they drove and when they picked her up, and the general vicinity of where they probably met her and the circumstances surrounding why they met. It's just we don't know who this person is. And we've tried lots of different ways to solve the case, uh, through digital forensics, DNA, and we're still stuck. That's from Bobby Dick.

SPEAKER_06 3:40

Uh, it's, you know, Captain Ahab chasing his obsession with the white whale, the one that injured him, and he's wanting to get the whale back, and he just never can. As a detective, the white whale is the case that you can never solve.

SPEAKER_09 3:54

Any homicide detective uh that does this job for any length of time will find that they have an unsolved case. And this is one of ours.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

The leaked detective stays with the case, and the expectation is it remains an active and open investigation until there's a resolution. Only upon retirement or separation from the department does an unsolved homicide move into the cold case files.

SPEAKER_10 5:01

You know, I can think back to when I did my time in maternal affairs. There was a senior detective who was getting ready to retire. He had been in homicide for years. And he had a cold case that he just didn't want to give up on, and he had binders lined up behind his desk. Um, and every day he came in, he looked at it and you know, would think about it.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

That's Sergeant Chris Cruiser. He and Sergeant Jeff Longnecker are the supervisors of APD's major crime homicide unit. With roughly 150 unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, and only one cold case investigator, you might be wondering how cases get assigned to Detective McDonald. There's no exact formula, but those decisions are made in close collaboration between Detective McDonald and his two sergeants.

SPEAKER_10 5:46

So basically, if if there's an unsolved homicide, it never goes inactive. We don't inactivate homicide cases. So it's either closed by whatever means possible or it remains open and goes into the cold case queue. Um normally the way we do it is if a case goes for a year without any like solid leads, you know, solvability, um, it can go over to cold case. As long as the detective who's assigned is still in homicide, they're going to keep that case with them, even if it's technically a cold case. We assign cold cases based off, you know, several different factors. It might be a tip that comes in that nobody's heard about in five years, and all of a sudden we get a new tip. Um, Jason or myself or Sergeant Longnecker might be going through the cold case queue reviewing cases, um, and we come across one where we're like, hey, this looks like it's got some potential leads or maybe new technology that can work towards it. Um, so it can it can happen from multiple ways.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Solvability. You've heard it a couple of times already in this episode. It's kind of a funny word, but it's one that's used frequently among detectives in the major crimes homicide unit. In cold cases, it refers to an analysis to determine which open investigations have the highest potential to be solved. And it's typically the deciding factor when Sergeants Longnecker and Cruiser and Detective McDonald discuss which cold cases require his attention.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

So, with all those unsolved murders, the way we decide which ones are going to get worked, uh we have to look at each one individually and see what kind of solvability factors they have. So is there forensic evidence that can be retested or tested for the first time that maybe we didn't have the technology for back in the day? Um that would be something that we would obviously grab onto and run with. Uh, but primarily the solvability factors are the number one thing. The Chelsea Yasser case was a case recommended to me by retired detective Steve Connor, who was the cold case detective I replaced. And he had a kind of a handful of cases that he handed to me when he left, um, saying, hey, these have some potential. There's DNA in these cases. Um, and so that was one of the cases that I was given by Steve Connor to look at.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

We've been saying throughout this series that the Chelsea Yasser case is unique. There's DNA evidence, witness interviews with plenty of solid background information about Chelsea. And the former cold case detective thinks there's high probability it can be solved. Here's Sergeant Longnecker to remind us why he believes the case warrants so much of Detective McDonald's attention.

SPEAKER_09 8:29

I hadn't known about this case. It happened a couple years before I came up to the unit. Um, the biggest issue really, well, two issues. One is the family's very interested in the investigation and where it's at, and two, the entire incident's caught on video camera. It's not often that you have a uh unsolved case where you can watch the murder happen. Um, and that is what it is in this case. So we have good vehicle information, we see the homicide occurring, the aftermath of that, and so it's just kind of a unique case in terms of coal case to have that video. Um and there's a there's a lot of things that Detective McDonald's done on this case to further it and get us closer to where we want to be.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

With so many things in life, when you have a major task to complete, you might start with a to-do list. The same is true in law enforcement, whether it's an act of call, an ongoing investigation, responding to a critical incident, or diving into a cold case.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

I think the initial response was good because we had the victim on scene in a parking lot area at night, and video was quickly obtained. Um, identification of her was quickly obtained, and we were able to then reach out to family members uh because of that quick ID that was made of the victim and get her backstory. We also got to uh reach out to her boyfriend, who was out of state at the time, and learn more about her friends and social circle here in Colorado and get their backstory on Chelsea, which was very important early on in the investigation. As well as the crime scene itself, CSI did a great job of collecting and processing a lot of evidence at the scene. Uh Chelsea had a large handbag that she had with her that when she fell to the ground uh after her assault, uh, a lot of stuff kind of scattered on the pavement. And everything was collected, everything was documented and preserved, and as well as her body, it was well preserved and processed for DNA evidence and any evidence that could link uh the killer to the case. And fortunately, at autopsy, we did get a fingernail sample beneath her fingernails that was uh a male donor, and that was a good enough sample to enter into CODIS, but we've not gotten a match yet. So to this day, we're doing things with that DNA to try to identify who it belongs to, who that male is.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

The first time DNA evidence was successfully used in a criminal trial was in 1986 in Narboro, England, to convict Colin Pitchfork in the rapes and murders of two teenagers. It was successfully tested a year later in the U.S., when a Florida jury convicted Tommy Lee Andrews in another rape case. By 2016, DNA evidence had already proven itself a reliable and powerful investigative tool. What's different today compared to 10 years ago is the technology. It's constantly advancing and changing. Evidence that was previously considered too heavily degraded or too microscopic in volume to produce a complete DNA profile is now being retested, and in many cases, yielding conclusive results. That is important to Chelsea's case, particularly through advancements in touch DNA analysis.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

So one of the big hurdles in this case is the fact that uh Chelsea was an escort and she had a lot of male contacts. Um the exact number of contacts, we don't know. But she was active advertising her services on Backpage. She we've found recently she had other social dating sites that she was advertising on and was getting a lot of uh inquiries from male suitors uh from those sites. And we believe, based on talking to her friends circle, that she did have a date planned that evening that she was killed. Who that date was with, we don't know. So my to-do list uh when I finished reviewing the case involved the handbag that Chelsea had with her uh inside the vehicle she was killed in and next to her when she was found on the ground, hadn't been processed yet for touch DNA. And the assumption was she was either being robbed or just simply assaulted over an argument in the vehicle she was in in the final moments of her life. And if it was uh robbery, maybe her handbag was trying to be wretched from her arms um unsuccessfully because she made it out of the car with that handbag. But that handbag hadn't been processed for touch DNA, and so that was one item I sent off for testing.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Detective McDonald also is having Chelsea's clothes, namely the sweater she was wearing, reanalyzed for DNA. The sweater was tested in 2016 by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, but due to technological limitations, the extensive injuries Chelsea sustained, and the fact that it had been touched by numerous first responders who were trying to save her life, analysts focused on splotches of her sweater that they believed at the time would yield the best chances of obtaining DNA of her attacker. But thanks to technological advancements allowing analysts to build DNA profiles from traces or even microscopic amounts of DNA evidence, Chelsea's sweater is right now being reanalyzed in hopes a new DNA profile can be obtained.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

So Chelsea was wearing a pink long-sleeve shirt, real baggy. And it was covered with blood when she was found. It was also cut off of her body by AFR, who was doing CPR and life-saving measures on her. So that shirt has been handled, it's been cut, it's very bloody with her own blood. And it has been analyzed somewhat by CBI for DNA. So far, the patches that they have tested have come back to just Chelsea's DNA. We don't have an unknown male or unknown DNA profile besides Chelsea's on her sweater. However, I've talked to CBI about specifically her left arm sleeve because she was sitting in the front passenger seat of this minivan, and the driver sitting right to her left is the one who was stabbing her. She had defensive wounds in her hands, and you'd think she'd be fighting off her attacker with her left arm primarily, the way they were seated in the car. I want them to specifically really focus on that left arm, because that's most likely what had contact, physical contact with the driver during this attack. And they promised that they would do a very extensive workup on that left sleeve specifically, as well as the rest of the sweater that hadn't been tested, uh, and see if we get a DNA profile that's not Chelsea's.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

We've heard a lot about DNA in this episode already, and we're not done yet. Through partnerships with the Cold Case Unit at the 18th Judicial District's Attorney's Office and Woodlands, Texas, based Authorum Labs, Detective McDonald is running the male DNA profile taken from Chelsea's fingernails through a relatively new forensic investigative process known as FIG. It stands for Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy. You've probably heard of it. It's when you take an unknown DNA profile and upload it to a public genealogy database to identify family members and try to get relatives to help you identify the suspect. The success rate isn't terribly high because it requires a lot of buy-in from family. But it's another avenue worth exploring. Several high-profile cases have been solved through forensic investigative genetic genealogy. You certainly heard of the most famous, the Golden State Killer.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

I think the big thing that I'm able to work with today that wasn't a thing 10 years ago was the forensic genetic genealogy, which is where we take a DNA profile of the suspect and we upload it as if it were ours into like ancestry, for example, and see who it's related to. And then when we build out that family tree, we can then go contact the relatives if we find any that it's related to and map out their family tree more, and it can maybe get us to who the killer is.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

It's fascinating work, but Detective McDonald isn't content with waiting to see how these steps pan out. He's constantly researching and exploring new investigative methods and innovative technologies that can be applied to Chelsea Yasser's case. You've heard Detective McDonald say at the top of the show, the most interesting thing about cold cases for him is being handed a case that's 95% complete, and finding that last 5% of the puzzle to get the complete picture. Sometimes those pieces of evidence exist and you have to find them. Sometimes they don't. And you have to be creative with the evidence you do have. Here's where things get creative.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

She was waiting for somebody. And then she finally leaves Burger King and starts walking towards Mississippi. We just don't see what car she gets into. But I think we can assume that it's most likely the date that she was waiting for. And it's just 25 minutes later, approximately, that she arrives in this Burlington Coke Factory parking lot in this maroon minivan where she's then brutally murdered. Um and then the vehicle just drives off. We never got a plate on this minivan, but we did get its color and its general shape. So I did a lot of research in ruling in and ruling out make and models and years of minivans. And then I did some work with our crime analysts to try to identify maroon minivans of this certain vintage and make and model that were involved in any kind of crimes in the city of Aurora or metro area that we knew of around this time frame. Unfortunately, not many were identified. So I went a step further, and we had LPR cameras in Aurora back in 2016. They weren't as prolific as they are today, but we had some on the Mississippi Corridor, which is where this murder happened. So working with crime analysts, I had them pull the archived LPR hits for the day of Chelsea's murder. And that produced a spreadsheet of like 10,000 vehicles for the 24-hour period that I had pulled. From that list, mind you, this is a 10-year-old case. And so if I were to run the plates from a 10-year-old spreadsheet, 90% of them aren't going to come back to the vehicles that they were registered to in 2016. So what I had to do is send that spreadsheet of 10,000 vehicles to DMV. Colorado DMV has investigators that can do just that task. They can run a plate historically and see who was it registered to, what vehicle was it registered to in 2016, for example. And they accepted that task, which was a huge ask, and it took several months for them to compile that list. When they had it finished, I asked them to eliminate everything off that spreadsheet except for maroon minivans or red, maroon or red minivans. And they did so and sent me back a list of about 500. So I had 500 minivans that were red or maroon on that one day in 2016 that had tripped LPR cameras in Aurora. So I looked at the spreadsheet and I could see the year in making model of these 500 minivans. And I took it upon myself to rule out the ones I didn't believe fit the look of the minivan on camera at Burlington Cote Factory. And that got it down to about 40 minivans. So then with that list, I started running those registered owners in 2016. And running the plate to see if we had any contacts with people, either speeding tickets or accidents or crimes involving those 40 minivans. And what I came up with was a short list of about 12 potential suspects. And when I say potential suspects, all I mean is I could say that the minivan that was registered to this plate in 2016 couldn't be ruled out as looking like what I saw on video at Burlington Cote Factory. And additionally, those 12 people that were registered owners or associated to those minivans in 2016 had criminal records, had violence in their history, were males, and could maybe be good for this kind of crime. So working with that list, we have started writing 41-1 court orders for DNA for these people and slowly tracking them down and seeing if we can get their DNA, compare it to what we've got from our crime scene, specifically under Chelsea's fingernails, and see if we can get a match.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

What you just heard Detective McDonald describe is his pursuit for that last 5%. We don't know the license plate number of the dark red van. That evidence wasn't captured on video or through witness accounts, so in a sense, it doesn't exist. So, Detective McDonald relied on what we do know and what we can access with the help of technology and historical records. An innovative approach reinforced by an uncommon partnership with the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles that carved down 10,000 historical vehicle registrations to a short list of just 12 men with violent criminal histories who drove dark red vans back in 2016. It's not a sure thing, but it's 12 fresh leads to chase. The trick is finding these people, obtaining their DNA through a court order, and hoping it matches the male profile recovered from Chelsea's fingernails. The investigative process is rarely a straight path. It's a meandering journey, often punctuated by a series of dead ends. That's especially true in a 10-year-old cold case. It's a gruelingly slow and methodical process. But Detective McDonald is making steady progress, and we believe we're close to solving this case. Chelsea Marie Yasser was just 21 years old when she was brutally killed. She had goals, dreams, and many people who loved her. She wasn't a perfect person. None of us are, but someone's mistakes are never a reason for a life to be taken. And despite her shortcomings, her story didn't deserve to end the way it did. Brutal, personal, and far, far too soon. Chelsea deserves justice. Her loved ones deserve answers and some sense of peace. Just like with every case that crosses a detective's desk here, the men and women of ABD are not going to stop until the person responsible is held accountable for their actions.

SPEAKER_03 25:18

She had a good heart. She just uh lost her way. She was lost her way. She just uh and she was young.

unknown 25:26

She deserved a second chance.

SPEAKER_03 25:28

And uh for her life to be taken the way it was, nobody no one deserves uh to have their life taken away.

SPEAKER_04 25:38

Chelsea didn't choose to die, she was killed. And so we want to be able to bring the person that did this to justice and um give closure to it, if anything. That's that's basically what's important about it. And if this person or persons are out there still doing things like that, we want to stop that as well.

SPEAKER_10 25:56

Community should care care about every case, every homicide we get. I mean, we do in the unit, they're all important to us.

SPEAKER_08 26:02

Every life loss is a serious tragedy, and it's it hits home even more so when somebody has an unrealized life and potential ahead of them that never gets to be lived. And if you know anybody or have lost anybody, you understand how painful that can be and how sad that is.

SPEAKER_07 26:21

It is a team effort because it's a team mentality, and we all have the same team mentality. We want to make our communities better. We want to make our communities safer.

SPEAKER_04 26:30

We want to solve things. That's what we do as officers. That's part of the reason that I joined um the police force to do stuff like that. And we want to be there to help people, you know. And I've been in other cases where I've had to give death notifications and the look on families' faces and the heartache. You you uh you you sympathize for them for sure.

SPEAKER_07 26:48

So when it comes to certain cases that don't have a closure or don't have a solution to them, it's not something that we just give up on.

SPEAKER_09 26:59

Homicides are at the top of the most serious things that the department's focused on, and we never stop looking for the suspects that have murdered someone in our community.

SPEAKER_08 27:13

We follow every bit of evidence until we get answers. This case demands answers, and we're not gonna stop until we get those answers.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

The Aurora Police Department is still actively investigating this case, and detectives are interested in speaking with anyone who might have information about Chelsea's murder. Specifically, investigators are interested in speaking with anyone who knows someone who drove a dark red or maroon minivan, similar in appearance to a 1995-1998 Ford Winstar, who's known to carry a knife, has a history of violence against women, and would have been an Aurora in May of 2016. No tip is too small in this investigation, and your information could make the difference in solving this case. Anyone who has information about this investigation is asked to call our cold case hotline at 303-326-TIPS. That's 303-326-8477.

SPEAKER_05 28:27

The White Whale, the Chelsea Asser Story, is a production of the Aurora Police Department Public Information Office. Our thanks to Cold Case Detective Jason McDonald, Sergeant Jeff Longnecker, Sergeant Chris Cruiser, and APD's Major Crime Homicide Unit. This episode was researched, written, and reported by PIOs Joe Moylan and Gabby Easterwood, and our agency videographer Nick Perot. Audio and video recording by Nick Perot. Audio and sound editing by Gabby Easterwood. Narration by Gabby Easterwood. This project is overseen by communications manager Katie Fisher with the support of the Aurora Police Department's Chief's Office. Title track for the podcast, Concrete Burnout, was created with the assistance of AI platform Wiureka. Music for the credits, Dusty Spoke, also was created with the assistance of Murika and inspired by some of Chelsea Yasser's favorite musicians. Additional information about the Chelsea Yasser case, including photos and video, can be found using the link to the source material in this episode description.