Husband-wife detective duo proud to have helped solve the murder of Mary Catherine Edwards

[Music] tonight Clayton Foreman remains behind bars in the Jefferson County Jail soon he'll be transferred to a state prison we told you Foreman will spend the rest of his life Behind Bars after he was convicted of capital murder this week in the 1995 killing of Mary Katherine Edwards genetic genealogy helped Bulma police F Foreman nearly 30 years after the crime 12 news anchor Jordan Williams introduces us to the husband and a wife detective Duo who helped crack this case the 1995 murder of Mary Katherine Edwards haunted Bowmont for years detective Aon Lewellen started researching the case in 2010 did a bunch of research and created a Cold Case list and then we worked some beyond that had some successes in some other cold cases that meant digging through crime scene photos and videos and checking into dozens of suspects detectives excluded in the early years we would go back to them every now and then looking to see if Witnesses stories changed or if science would be able to benefit us in this case it was the science in 2021 police worked with the Texas Rangers to send DNA evidence including a cutting from this comforter to a private lab in Houston that led to a DNA profile of a suspect I'm a very visual learner and once the the genealogical tree grew beond my computer screen I was like I got I need some help I was running out of Post-it notes so you know Tina has had some experience with this so she's like move over Junior let me help and the rest of this history detective Aaron Luellen and his wife Tina were hot on the trail I started working at that night and I probably had a 100 people in the profile the first night they needed to find the suspect's closest living relative as I kept working the trees and adding people I kept seeing her name over and over again she was chery La point a genetic genealogist in Louisiana so then we started researching her and she ends up being excellent at what she does I was lucky to be here I was absolutely lucky to be led here Leo's father-in-law showed up on the family tree of possible suspects this works this works this is the crime fighting tool of the future in my opinion the genetic genealogy and um it's speaking for the victims who cannot speak for themselves to go from the Tree of 7400 yes to Two Brothers From bont yes it was a lot of ruling out a whole lot of ruling out in fact some of the people that we ruled out don't even know that we ruled them out for the luellin it's clear this is a calling and the rest is history the rest is history they're proud to police together honored to help close the books on one of bont's most notorious killings at the courthouse Jordan Williams 12 News you can catch up on all of our stories from the trial and our past reporting on the death of Mary Katherine at words on 12 News plus and on our 12 News YouTube channel