How A Soft Drink Helped Solve A Cold Case – Sylvia Mae Quayle

Sylvia Mae Quayle was born on September 23, 1946 in Denver, Colorado.

She had a younger sister, and both were daughters of the marriage formed by William and Mary. The two grew up in a loving and very familiar environment, so we can say that they had a happy childhood.

In the sixties she graduated from Englewood High School where she is remembered as an ambitious, vibrant and friendly girl. The typical person capable of illuminating a room with Her presence.

At that time she was fond of history, which led her to investigate the work of her uncle, the architect Wesley Quayle.

Some time later Sylvia began to work as a secretary in an architecture studio, however, as she was an excellent cook, she managed to open her own business specializing in wedding cakes.

In her free time he went to ceramics classes with her sister whom she loved very much, as well as her parents. She was so close to them that when she went to live on her own she moved to a house that was only a few meters away.

From that moment on, they established a routine that consisted of having coffee together every morning. But unfortunately one of those mornings was not as expected because someone ended Sylvia’s life in a brutal way.

The facts:

On the night of August 3, 1981, at about 11 a.m., Sylvia spoke to her sister on the phone for the last time.

The next morning, shortly before 8, William went to pick her up for coffee routine. The man knocked on the door but since his daughter didn’t answer, he decided to open it with his own key. Once inside, he made a terrible discovery: On top of a carpet in the living room lay Sylvia’s lifeless body. The 34-year-old woman had no clothes and was lying on her back with her arms on her head entangled in a long-sleeved shirt. Panicked, the man called the police.

When the agents arrived at the scene, they found William destroyed. The man told them that after the discovery he had removed a bloody white towel that the aggressor had put on his daughter’s face. William’s purpose was to cover his naked body.

When examining the scene, the agents found several important things: On one side near Sylvia’s body there was a bloody knife and a few meters away was her underwear.

The living room had traces of blood, as did the front door and a pillow in the victim’s bedroom.

They also observed that the telephone line in the room was cut off, in fact when they checked the outside they saw that the same thing had happened with the outside cable and that it was sectioned over the hood of Sylvia’s car.

From the marks found by the investigators, they came to the conclusion that the killer knocked down the line as follows: he put a garden hose on the cable and then pulled it down.

The detectives also found evidence that the aggressor had tested several windows of the house to be able to access. Then they discovered that he had managed to enter through the one in the bathroom. For all this he had to wear gloves because they didn’t find a single fingerprint.

The autopsy revealed that Sylvia was stabbed 3 times in the upper back, also had marks on her neck and a shot in the upper part of the head made with a 22-gauge weapon. In addition, other marks indicated that the young woman had fought with all her strength.

The cause of death was due to a great loss of blood since the stab wounds reached the heart and lungs. The gunshot wound was a secondary cause of death. On the other hand, it was also known that her attacker had abused her.

During the investigation they managed to collect 140 tests that at that time did not help much... and it must be remembered that it was 1981 and the techniques that existed to analyze all the elements were very basic.

Over time and in their eagerness to solve the crime, the investigators were testing the different technological advances that they were finding in their path, but without success.

In 1983, forensic technicians decided to analyze the carpet where Sylvia’s body appeared. To do this, they used an alternative light source. Thanks to this, they found a strange material that they ultimately identified as semen.

But that same year the case took a radical turn and that is that the serial killer Ottis Elwood Toole confessed that he had taken Sylvia’s life.

Maybe this name will sond better to you if it is accompanied by Henry Lee Lucas’s. As I already told in the previous post, these two subjects were not only known for their crimes but also because they were awarded the authorship of others who had not committed. With this they only managed to hinder the investigations and prevent the real culprit from being arrested.

In 1993 they compared Toole’s samples with those found at the crime scene, and as you can imagine they did not coincide. For this reason, Bob Gallagher, then district attorney, completely ruled out this man.

In 1995, another section of the semen-stained carpet was cut and sent to the Colorado Research Office for analysis. Five years later, the sample provided the CBI agents with an unknown male DNA profile.

The profile was connected to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, but no match was found.

In 2019, Metro Denver Crime Stoppers appeared on the scene... That for those of you who don’t know, their mission is to support police agencies for the resolution of cases. Metro Denver at that time teamed up with United Data Connect, a company founded by a former Denver district attorney who worked in the flourishing genealogy industry.

In January 2020, unsolved case detectives approached Crime Stoppers with Sylvia’s case.

After thoroughly reviewing their file, they determined that they could use the DNA found at the crime scene to reach the culprit through the investigation of state-of-the-art family DNA.

Four months later, the company’s technicians had a name: 62-year-old David Dwayne Anderson.

On the hunt for the killer:

The detectives began to investigate Anderson and it must be said that they discovered quite interesting facts... To begin with at the time of the events he was 22 years old and lived about 3 km from Englewood.

In addition, according to his records between 1981 and 1986 Anderson had been arrested for entering to rob at least 8 houses and businesses in the area.

In several of these homes he managed to enter without leaving a single trace through the windows, just as Sylvia’s aggressor did.

With all this, the unsolved case detectives together with United Data’s own investigator, Robert Fuller, traveled to Cozad, the city of Nebraska where Anderson lived... Their mission was clear: they had to secretly collect the man’s DNA.

For several days they were observing all their movements from the outside of their apartment complex. On January 18, 2021, Fuller recovered two garbage bags that Anderson had thrown into a container.

Inside there were 15 articles that potentially contained man’s genetic material. Among them was a can of vanilla Coca-Cola, a bottle of water, a bottle of spicy rum and a bottle of beer.

Two days later, Fuller met with an investigator at a travel stop in Sterling, Colorado, to deliver the confiscated items he had individually packaged in test bags for analysis.

Finally, on January 29, 2021, the laboratory report arrived: the DNA found in the Coca-Cola can coincided with multiple tests recovered from Sylvia Quayle’s body and residence during the investigation.

For example, the semen found on the carpet matched, as did the swabs taken from the woman’s vagina during the autopsy, and on the white towel that her father removed from her face.

On February 10, Anderson was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Everything indicates that he will be prosecuted according to the laws in force in 1981, which is when the events occurred. That means that if he is found guilty he would be sentenced to life imprisonment, but with the possibility of parole after 20 years. Current laws do not allow parole.

Mitch Morrissey, the former prosecutor who founded United Data, told the media how much it meant for him to meet the rest of Sylvia’s family. One detail that really struck him was the fact that her father was the person who stumbled upon the body.

For her part, Michelle Tovrea, chief of police, stated that the arrest took a long time to arrive:

“I am proud to be able to tell Sylvia’s sister and brother-in-law that the men and women of our department have anticipated the opportunity to make this announcement for almost 40 years”.

Unfortunately, the young woman’s parents didn’t live long enough to know who took her daughter’s life. William passed away in 1999 and his wife followed him 10 years later.

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