Episode 57: The Murder of Helene Pruszynki
Left: Helene Pruszynski who was killed in Colorado in 1980.
Right: James Clanton who confessed to her killing forty years later.
The Murder of Helene Pruszynski
It was 2018, when Jessi Still completed a DNA kit through 23AndMe. She was curious to know her family lineage and unaware that the single act of spitting into a little plastic tube and sending it to a DNA company would solved a decades old murder.
In January of 1980, twenty-one-year-old Helene Pruszynski was interning at a radio station in Denver, Colorado. A Massachusetts native, she’d travelled to Colorado with a classmate of Wheaton College-also selected as an intern. Helene was an aspiring journalist and was excited for the opportunity.
On January 16th, 1980, Helene worked her shift at the radio at 5:30 to board a bus to her aunt’s home who she was staying with during her internship. She never came home. The following day, her brutalized body was discovered. Helene had been sexually assaulted and stabbed. Police launched an investigation, which included a composite sketch by an eyewitness who saw a man in the area where Helen’s body was discarded. Despite the efforts within a year, the case had gone cold.
As the years and then decades passed, police returned to the case again and again. They had DNA and emerging technologies allowed them to test the DNA against the known profiles in CODIS. Unfortunately, they repeatedly discovered there were no matches.
In 2017, they started looking at a new angle, open-sourced DNA databases. Through certain databases, such as GED Match, police can upload an unknown profile from DNA left at a crime scene and find that person’s relatives. From there, a genetic genealogist must build out a family tree in an attempt to trace the bloodline to the correct individual who committed the crime.
When Helene’s murderer’s DNA was uploaded to GED Match, it took investigators to Jessi Still. From there, they built out the family tree until they eventually discovered Curtis Allen White, who’d moved to9 Colorado in 1979 and had been previously convicted of raping a woman at knifepoint. In 1982, he changed his name to James Curtis Clanton. Still, police can’t rely on the family tree. They have to collect their suspect’s DNA and match it against the crime scene DNA. When they did that, they knew they had their man.
James Clanton was arrested and though initially he denied having murdered Helene, the following day he confessed in detail to having abducted Helene on that January day nearly forty years in the past after she got off the bus. He pleaded guilty to Helene’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
Sources:
9News: 40 Years in the Dark: How genetic genealogy solved the Helene Pruszynski murder case
11Alive: 'Nobody ever wants to think about being related to a killer': Ga. woman's DNA linked relative to 1980 rape and murder
People.com: A Young Woman's Brutal 1980 Murder Baffled Police: How a 'New Tool' Helped Crack the Case
The Boston Globe. Boston, Massachusetts · Sunday, January 20, 1980. No Solid Clues in Interns Murder.
The Daily Item. Lynn, Massachusetts. Thurs., July 02, 2020. Man Sentenced to Life in 1980 Killing of Colorado Intern.
9News: 'It gives me some peace knowing that this beast is in jail': Killer of KHOW radio intern sentenced in 40-year-old case
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