Sep 28, 2026 · 55 min · 16 segments
The Michigan 1988 cold case was finally cracked after 35 years by a bloody fingerprint discovered on a phone. This episode examines the forgotten investigation, forensic breakthrough, and evidence…
Because before Kathy Swartz became a case number in a filing cabinet at the Three Rivers Police Department, She was a girl from a tiny farming village who loved horses, hunted with her dad, and dreamed about bigger things.
Twenty years before that bloody fingerprint ended up on a bedroom phone in Three Rivers, Kathy Sue Swartz was born on May 24, 1969, in Mendon, Michigan.
Mendon sits on a bend of the St. Joseph River in the southwest corner of the state, about 20 miles south of Kalamazoo.
It is the kind of place where everybody knows everybody.
Farmland stretches flat in every direction.
The graduating class at Mendon High School was so small it barely filled two pages of the yearbook.
Her father ran the pro shop at the local bowling alley.
Her mother, who everyone called Augie, was the kind of woman who held the family together.
Kathy joined the Girl Scouts and 4-H, and by the time she was eight years old, she had her own pony.
She was a talented artist who could draw just about anything.
Friends and family described her as sweet, caring, confident, and well-loved.
She called herself a tomboy, and she meant it.
She went hunting with her father every season and loved every minute of it.
Her lifelong friend Jennifer Outman later described the kind of closed-knit world they grew up in.
Mendon was small enough that the kids all knew each other by name and the parents all knew each other's business.
If you needed something, you asked a neighbor.
If your kid was acting up, someone else's mom would set them straight before you even heard about it.
The kind of town where bad things just did not happen, or so everyone believed.
Kathy was especially close with her father.
David Sr. was the kind of dad who took his daughter hunting, not because he wanted a son, but because she wanted to go.
She loved it.
She was good at it.
Because before Kathy Swartz became a case number in a filing cabinet at the Three Rivers Police Department, She was a girl from a tiny farming village who loved horses, hunted with her dad, and dreamed about bigger things.
Twenty years before that bloody fingerprint ended up on a bedroom phone in Three Rivers, Kathy Sue Swartz was born on May 24, 1969, in Mendon, Michigan.
Mendon sits on a bend of the St. Joseph River in the southwest corner of the state, about 20 miles south of Kalamazoo.
It is the kind of place where everybody knows everybody.
Farmland stretches flat in every direction.
The graduating class at Mendon High School was so small it barely filled two pages of the yearbook.
Her father ran the pro shop at the local bowling alley.
Her mother, who everyone called Augie, was the kind of woman who held the family together.
Kathy joined the Girl Scouts and 4-H, and by the time she was eight years old, she had her own pony.
She was a talented artist who could draw just about anything.
Friends and family described her as sweet, caring, confident, and well-loved.
She called herself a tomboy, and she meant it.
She went hunting with her father every season and loved every minute of it.
Her lifelong friend Jennifer Outman later described the kind of closed-knit world they grew up in.
Mendon was small enough that the kids all knew each other by name and the parents all knew each other's business.
If you needed something, you asked a neighbor.
If your kid was acting up, someone else's mom would set them straight before you even heard about it.
The kind of town where bad things just did not happen, or so everyone believed.
Kathy was especially close with her father.
David Sr. was the kind of dad who took his daughter hunting, not because he wanted a son, but because she wanted to go.
She loved it.
She was good at it.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.