Genealogy And DNA Profiling Helped Solve 26-Year-Old Atlanta Murder, Rape Case

ATLANTA, GA — A 26-year-old Atlanta murder and rape cold case investigation is closed now thanks to genealogy and DNA profiling that connected the suspect to an East Point sexual assault nine years later.

But East Point victim Betty Brown told reporters Tuesday morning, “It’s bittersweet.”

The suspect, whom police declined to name, died in August 2021 of liver and kidney failure.

“Unfortunately, this perpetrator is dead, so he’s not going to have his day in court,” said retired Atlanta Police Department homicide Detective Vincent Velasquez.

Nacole Smith disappeared June 7, 1995, as she walked to school, Velasquez said. The 14-year-old was shot twice in the face after she was brutally assaulted and raped, investigators said.

“This investigation was massive,” Velasquez said. “Atlanta Police Department pulled out all the stops.”

That included using two classes of police cadets to canvass the area for evidence and taking blood samples from at least 50 people to eventually obtain a DNA profile. Still, the case went cold.

Velasquez reopened the case seven years later, attempting on his own to “bring some life into this case” by interviewing people from the initial investigation. After two years, there were still no new leads until tragedy struck.

“In 2004 we get a call,” Velasquez said. “Someone assaulted a young girl in East Point, GA — 13 years old — exactly nine years and 13 days later. As a result of that, another profile was obtained, and we have a forensic match.”

Brown was that 13-year-old.

“This has been a part of my life that I have hidden for a while because I just did not want to live in that pain anymore,” she said. “But I'm here. I'm not OK with the situation on how long it took us to get here, but I'm happy that I'm finally here and that he's no longer out there able to do things that he did to me and Nacole to others.”

Brown was able to provide a composite drawing of the suspect. Police put up a billboard of the composite near Greenbriar Mall. The case was aired on the national TV show “America’s Most Wanted.” Investigators were even able to narrow down the eventual suspect as a person of interest. But there wasn’t enough evidence to file charges.

"This Case Has Not Died"

Every investigator who touched the murder case remained involved with it in some way, retired Atlanta Police Detective Reginald Boone said.

“I worked with Detective Thomas Townsley, who was the first detective for this case,” Boone said. "And we stayed out in the woods (the night of Smith’s death) digging holes looking for evidence all of that night. And then he worked the case up until the time he died back in 2017.”

Velasquez retired in 2017 but continued to stay in touch with Nacole Smith’s mother, Acquenellia Smith.

“This case has not died,” he said. “Not only were we in constant contact with Nacole Smith’s mother, but we were also in constant contact with the victim from East Point. And we have been working this jointly with East Point Police.”

Atlanta Police Detective Scott Demeester, who was just three months older than Smith, took over Velasquesz’s role on the APD Complex and Cold Case Squad and gathered all the wisdom from the investigators working the case up to this point. And he added a little bit of science and ingenuity inspired by the 2020 conviction of Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer — called the Golden Gate Killer — who was linked to more than a dozen murders, nearly 50 rapes and more than 100 burglaries between 1974 and 1986 in northern California.

“Always looking for new investigative leads started to look into the possibility of trying to identify the suspect, utilizing genealogy and ancestry databases,” Demeester said. "That's how they solved the Golden State Killer murders. So, when that kind of broke nationally, I remember sitting in the office and talking with my sergeant at the time and another detective … and the first case that came to our mind was Nacole Smith. Like, we need to do this.”

Rape kits with DNA samples taken from both Smith’s and Brown’s cases returned matches to GBI forensic investigators. But they needed an ID to tie both the matching samples to.

“So, using genealogy and ancestral databases, we developed him as a suspect,” Demeester said. “We were able to obtain his DNA from another piece of evidence that we had as completely unrelated to these two cases.”

GBI’s forensics technicians were able to extract DNA from that piece of evidence, and they uploaded it into the system to come up with a match for a man already identified as a person of interest.

“We got word just after Christmas that the GBI forensic lab was able to match his DNA profile to the DNA profile obtained in Nacole's investigation and in the unsolved rape of the victim from East Point,” Demeester said.

They had their man.

Closure Hard To Find

Atlanta Police homicide unit commander Lt. Ralph Woolfolk said police refused to speak the suspect’s name.

“At no point in this press conference have we uttered this suspect’s name,” Woolfolk said. “We don't want to give any relevance to him as an individual."

Adriane Love, the head of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office cold and capital case unit, lamented not being able to bring the suspect to justice.

“Were he alive, we would be preparing the case and putting it in front of a grand jury,” Love said.

Acquenellia Smith, Nacole Smith’s mother, struggled to accept that closure was not going to come easy with her daughter’s killer also now dead.

“I never imagined that this person would be deceased. There are so many unanswered questions that I had for him that I can never ask or get answers to. I’ll never say it was closure for me because I’ll live with this pain for the rest of my life,” Smith said before retreating into sobs.

Brown said she wanted to take the high road but wanted the family of the man who attacked her to live with the knowledge of his guilt.

“I’m mad that I didn't get the opportunity to face him,” she said. “To look at me his eyes and have him look at me and relive … and to face me. I just have to take what I've been given.”