During an otherwise quiet April night, Pennsylvania State Trooper Kevin Foley swerved from the path of duty and repeatedly stabbed Dr. John Yelenic to death. The vicious murder of the popular dentist rocked the community of Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
Documentarian Andrea Niapas gives us a thorough look at the crime and its aftermath, describing Dr. Yelenic's troubled marriage and complicated home life, and untangling the events that led his wife's lover--Trooper Foley--to commit such a violently aggressive crime.
Found guilty by a jury of his peers, Trooper Foley has never confessed to the crime. What were the forces motivating Foley to break his oath to protect and serve? Do we even now know the truth about that awful night?
Commonwealth v. Foley was a landmark case in the history of DNA evidence, as described in a bonus chapter by DNA expert Dr. Mark Perlin on "The Blairsville Slaying and the Dawn of DNA Computing". It was the first time that a sophisticated computer had ever interpreted a DNA mixture in a criminal trial. The Pennsylvania appellate court later established a statewide precedent for Cybergenetics TrueAllele® Casework technology. Dr. Perlin tells about the 7% unknown DNA fraction under the victim's fingernails, and how TrueAllele identified Mr. Foley a million times more powerfully than human review. Dr. John Yelenic was brutally and tragically murdered, but the trial that convicted his killer bequeathed to society a powerful truth-seeking technology for bringing criminals to justice.
Back in 1988 the David Copenhefer case was the first ever documented cyber crime in the United States. A Forensic federal agent named Alfred L. Johnson coined the saying...."Connecting the computer... to the man... to the notes... to the crime." Copenhefer thought he had gotten away with murder. But not so easy as simply pressing down on his computer DELETE button.
This a story of how law enforcement investigators in numerous states could not agree on a strong person of interest in cases of torture, assault, attempted murder, murder, and sexual deviance in their jurisdiction. As a result, a spree of female real estate agents and any female selling a home were his prey. From the late 1960's to mid 1988 his crime spree went undetected. A serial killer in every sense of the word with a list of victims left behind.
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