More than 40 years after the murder, the FBI matched a surviving fingerprint from Alberta's rental car to Arthur Porter III, a Louisville teenager in 1965 whose father owned the funeral home that handled Alberta's body. He failed a polygraph at the highest deception level — but was never charged.
Where this was said
At 42:30 · chapter starts 35:30
The story of the fingerprints is the heart of Ashley's cover-up argument. Detective Lancaster arrives at the fingerprint lab at 4:30 AM with a smart new idea for using the prints — and Officer Elliott has to tell him they're gone. The chain of custody leads to Sergeant Miller, who told technician Patterson to leave the prints alone before going for coffee. When Elliott returns for his next shift, the print cards are in a trash can between desks. Some are ruined; the crucial prints from the left door window — which Lancaster personally watched being lifted and calls the most important of the bunch — are never found. No photos, no negatives. Miller continues working the case. Nobody questions him. By 1988, when investigators try to revisit the case, nearly all physical evidence — photos, blood samples, and more — has disappeared, leaving only a couple of smeared surviving fingerprint cards.
Just two days after Alberta's murder, Detective Lancaster discovered that key fingerprint cards from her rental car had been thrown in a trash bin in the Louisville PD fingerprint lab. The most critical prints — from the left door window — were never recovered. Sergeant Miller, the last person with them, was never questioned.
Just two days after Alberta's murder, critical fingerprint cards lifted from her rental car were found discarded in a trash bin in the Louisville PD fingerprint lab, with the most important prints — from the left door window — never recovered.
In 2008, using the FBI's automated fingerprint database, investigators matched a print from Alberta's rental car to Arthur Porter III — a Louisville teenager in 1965 who by then was living in California.
A man used ChatGPT as a de facto lawyer, sharing self-incriminating details in his chats. When the transcripts were subpoenaed, the judge ruled no attorney-client privilege applied and admitted the chats as evidence against him. AI first passes are useful — treating AI as your counsel is dangerous.
CIA operative Edwin Wilson armed Muammar Gaddafi with 10,000 machine guns and 20 tons of C4 hidden in barrels of mud and flew them to Libya himself. He was sentenced to 52 years and served 12 in solitary. He was also a founder of the same arms network Oliver North contracted for the Contras.
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The illegal wildlife trade and the drug trade aren't just parallel industries — they actively overlap. Smugglers force-fed cocaine to boa constrictors to evade customs, packed drugs beneath layers of live animals in crates with spitting cobras on top, and exploited the chronic under-resourcing of US Fish and Wildlife inspection teams.
Mario Tabraue was sentenced to over 100 years in prison for murder and drug trafficking. He served 12. Nobody — not even the DEA agent who put him there — knows why he got out. That agent, Larry Lovelace, now lives in rural West Virginia with a gun within reach every night, still expecting retaliation.
Anson Wong from Malaysia was the Pablo Escobar of the global reptile trade, supplying rare animals — including Komodo dragons — to buyers across the world. He was caught in a sting, extradited to the US, and served the longest wildlife crime sentence at the time. The animals seized from him went on to stock some of America's biggest zoos.
Zelig Williams landed a role in Hamilton at just 19 while still in college — a rare achievement in a world where most Broadway dreams die young. By 28 he was a veteran ready to mentor the next generation, until he disappeared without a trace on October 3, 2024.
Season 5 of Dateline: Missing in America brings six new unsolved mysteries. The show is explicitly asking listeners to engage — because a detail someone remembers might be the break investigators need.
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