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These revelations didn’t happen overnight-in the intervening decades, crucial pieces of evidence had been lost amid the complicated chain of custody, and the initial results from DNA testing weren’t enough to pinpoint a specific individual right away-but they did offer new leads, and most importantly, new hope.Ĭorporal Gean Johnson and retired SLED agent lieutenant Rita Shuler. In the early 2000s, SLED reopened Fogle’s case, resubmitting evidence for examination and establishing matches for male DNA found on-scene. With the emergence of DNA testing, criminal forensics had undergone a revolution, blowing the hinges off cases long thought to be sealed away forever. Yet keeping track of the new developments in forensic technology, she never lost faith that one day the evidence might tell the story in a way that it couldn’t in 1978, as it had before (for example, with JoAnn Dewey, Anita Andrews, and Tina Faelz). Yet Rita Shuler never gave up-the case bugged her, kept her up at night, pestered her even as she moved on to other opportunities, even after she retired in 2001. In 1985, seven years after her murder, with no new evidence forthcoming, SLED was forced to put the case on ice. Weeks became months, and still Fogle’s family waited for justice. Worse, as so often happens in sensational cases, early leads-in this case, of violent neighbors-turned out over time to be red herrings, throwing investigators off the trail.
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Despite the considerable evidence collected at the scene, none of it offered any concrete leads, only partial pictures of the perpetrator. Metal fire poker that was around Elaine Fogle’s neck. Feeling an uncanny kinship with Fogle, from their age to their upbringing even to the kind of shoes and sweaters they both wore, Rita Shuler took the hunt personally, vowing never to rest until the culprit was caught.
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Surprised in her own home late one night during what appeared to be a foiled robbery, Fogle had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled with a fireplace poker in a particularly violent slaying. Those photos would prove crucial to finding Fogle’s killer. In 1978, the only digital cameras around were the ones you operated with your own ten digits, so every bit of photographic evidence that SLED collected required trained, careful handling from their arrival in the darkroom to their deposit in the case file.
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Shuler, a special investigator for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), had first joined the case as supervisor of the SLED Forensics Photography Lab, processing and developing the photos from the crime scene. Until Rita Shuler came along and tracked him for nearly 40 years. But none of it matched up-when Gwendolyn Elaine Fogle was murdered in her own home in Walterboro, South Carolina, in 1978, it was like her killer had vanished into thin air, bloody footprints and all. Blood, fingerprints, clothing, even the murder weapon were all found on scene.