Susan’s murder was a mystery. Then a plumber made a discovery

A terrible sight met police detective Marsha Reed one summer evening in 1989.

She entered the house at 219 Rambouillet Drive in the small town of Fort Collins, Colorado.

There was a stench in the entrance hall, and on the second floor the owner Susan Doll (39) was lying naked on the floor. She had been strangled with a telephone cord.

The forensic technicians were able to determine that it was a sexual murder after finding semen both on the victim and in various places in the home.

It could seem as if the killer had done it to mark some form of humiliation.

There was a window on the top floor. In the window sill, the technicians secured fingerprints which indicated that this was where the killer had entered.

No fingerprint matches

At that time, DNA testing was not possible, and the fingerprints that were found did not match.

The police came to the conclusion that the killer must have climbed over a fence block next to the house, and then onto the roof, and then got in through the window. This would indicate that the perpetrator they were hunting was relatively young.

Susan Doll was beautiful and was described as very outgoing. She had dated several younger men who could match the perpetrator profile.

Many in her circle of acquaintances were questioned, but the result was disappointing.

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Women’s panties stolen

But one thing piqued the police’s interest: 10 days before the murder, Susan reported a burglary. The only thing that had been stolen was 25 panties.

Witnesses described seeing a boy on a BMX outside her house that same day.

Now the police had a phantom image made from the descriptions, and soon the tips came pouring in. But none of them were particularly helpful.

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More panty thefts

The citizens of Fort Collins were troubled, and they were not less troubled by the wave of burglaries that washed over the city in the following months. The only thing stolen was women’s underwear.

The police wondered if it was a “copycat” – a criminal impersonator – or if it was the same killer who was going to point out who would be the next victim.

But there were no more murders, and after three months the strange break-ins also stopped.

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Finds in the boiler room

Marsha Reed steadfastly continued to work on the Susan Doll case, but it would take six years, until June 13, 1995, before she got her long-awaited breakthrough.

A plumber was supposed to service an oil boiler in an apartment complex about a kilometer from the crime scene. Then he found 13 dirty panties in the boiler room.

The burnt panties were taken for analysis, and the police found semen on them.

By now, forensics had progressed so far that the DNA on the panties could be compared with the DNA from the sperm found at Susan Doll’s home.

It was a perfect match. But still no hits were found in the criminal archive that could point out the perpetrator.

Three young shoplifters

Marsha Reed began to go back in time, to look at crimes committed near the crime scene immediately before and immediately after Susan Doll was murdered.

In the police register, the police found a shop theft in which three young boys were involved. At the time of the murder, they were living in the same apartment complex where the panties were later found.

The three were Keith Thames, his brother Doug Thames and their friend Paul Trujillo.

They were 15 and 16 years old when the murder was committed, and it could well be true that they had BMX bikes at the time, as one witness had pointed out.

Marsha Reed tracked all three to Grand Junction, Colorado. She approached them and said she was investigating a 1989 Fort Collins murder.

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Got a hit on the fingerprints

The three refused to answer questions, but agreed to provide fingerprints as well as hair and blood samples for forensic tests.

These Reed sent to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for analysis.

The fingerprints were examined by forensic scientist Ruth Hurst, who had investigated Susan’s residence and who had worked with Reed for six years to solve the case. She had previously gone through 30,000 fingerprints without getting a single match.

But when she compared the prints from Doug Thames to those at the crime scene, it finally happened. On August 3, Reed was able to arrest Doug Thames, a suspect in the murder of Susan Doll.

– It was my best day in my police career, she has said afterwards.

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Stolen underwear

Doug Thames refused, but on the same day he was arrested, Detective Reed received the results of the DNA samples. It was his sperm that had been found at the crime scene.

Doug Thames only admitted to stealing Susan Doll’s underwear in the burglary before the murder.

He claimed that he had been on a family camping trip in Wyoming, far from the crime scene, on the day of the murder.

His grandmother had brought a photo album to court, in which the photos were inscribed with dates that would refute the accusations made by prosecutor Mitchell Murray.

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The alibi cracks

When it was time for a lunch break during the trial, Marsha Reed sat down with prosecutor Murray to take a closer look at the pictures in the photo album. They discovered that only the photos that bolstered Doug Thames’ version were dated.

They also noticed one of the relatives of the Thames family, who was in several photos that were supposed to have been taken at the same time. But in some of the pictures he was clean-shaven, and in other pictures he had a solid moustache.

Thus they had cracked the alibi of Doug Thames, and on 6 May 1996 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Susan Doll.

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Another murder

Six years later, he received another life sentence. Then it turned out that his DNA also matched findings from the rape and murder of Jackie Taylor in 1994.

For that crime, a man had been wrongly convicted and innocently spent 18 years in prison.

As Doug Thames also has a sentence of 48 years in prison for rape, he will never have the opportunity for a new trial or a reduced sentence.

Marsha Reed and Ruth Hurst both quit the police force two years after Doug Thames was convicted of murdering Susan Doll.

This case was first published on 10/05 2024, and last updated on 10/05 2024.