# 4 Solved Cold Cases You Need To Know: Laura O'Malley, Edna Schubert, Leona Keller, Tiffany Tillmon

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 4 Aug 2025, 26 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1951927149.mp3

John me as we discuss four solved cold cases. Chapters: 0:00 Laura O'Malley 5:46 Edna Schubert 13:09 Leona Keller 20:08 Tiffany Tillmon 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472

## Transcript

[0:00] Laura O'Malley was just thirteen years old when she vanished from
[0:03] her home in Long Beach, NY, in late August 1975.
[0:08] According to contemporary reports, she had run away after
[0:12] significant tensions at home. She left a message saying she
[0:16] wouldn't return as long as her stepfather was living with the
[0:19] family. About a year after she
[0:22] disappeared, Laura's mother and stepfather separated, and her
[0:26] family pleaded publicly for the girl to come home.
[0:29] Unfortunately, those pleas went unanswered, and New York missing
[0:34] persons detectives chased countless leads in the late
[0:37] 1970s. Laura's siblings never gave up
[0:41] either. They spent years circulating her
[0:43] photo around NYC, believing she might have fled to the city and
[0:48] hoping someone had seen her. Despite these efforts, no trace
[0:52] of Laura O'Malley was found. 20 years after Laura's
[0:56] disappearance. On March 22nd, 1995, a shocking
[1:01] discovery was made on the opposite side of the country.
[1:04] Partial skeletal remains of a young female were found in a
[1:08] remote riverbed off Hwy. 129 near Watsonville in Santa Cruz
[1:14] County, California. Investigators at the scene noted
[1:18] the bones were badly weathered and initially suspected they
[1:21] might not be related to any recent crime at all.
[1:25] In fact, early on it was theorized to be a homestead
[1:28] burial, the remains of someone laid to rest on family land long
[1:33] ago. Because of this assumption that
[1:36] the bones were historic rather than an active case, forensic
[1:40] analysis at the time was limited.
[1:43] However, despite this, authorities did perform a
[1:46] standard DNA test on the remains, which confirmed they
[1:49] belong to an unidentified female and didn't match any known
[1:53] profile. The initial misclassification as
[1:58] a historical burial meant precious time was lost before
[2:01] realizing a crime might have occurred.
[2:04] It wasn't until 2019, nearly 24 years after the discovery, that
[2:10] the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office decided to take a fresh
[2:13] look at the case. Investigators sent the remains
[2:16] for advanced forensic testing, including radiocarbon dating.
[2:21] The results were eye opening. They indicated that the unknown
[2:25] girl was likely born in the mid 1960s and had died sometime
[2:29] between 1977 and 1984. This firmly placed her death in
[2:35] the late 20th century, not a century or more ago, prompting
[2:40] detectives to reclassify the case as an active cold case
[2:43] homicide investigation. The age of the victim at death
[2:48] was estimated to be in her mid teens, roughly 13 to 17 years
[2:52] old. Over the years, investigators
[2:56] and amateur sleuths tried to connect the Santa Cruz Jane Doe
[3:00] with missing persons reports from the 1970s and 1980s.
[3:05] Was she a runaway from California, a hitchhiker passing
[3:09] through? Or perhaps a victim of foul play
[3:11] dumped by the highway With no identifying documents or
[3:15] personal items recovered. Numerous theories surfaced about
[3:19] her identity and how she died. 1 Early theory after the 2019
[3:26] testing was that she could have been a hitchhiker or transient
[3:30] who suffered an accident near the river.
[3:33] However, foul play couldn't be ruled out.
[3:37] Meanwhile, for the O'Malley family back on the other side of
[3:39] the nation, the decades had continued to pass with no
[3:43] answers. Laura's whereabouts and
[3:46] condition remained unknown, and the California investigators had
[3:50] no idea there Jane Doe was a girl who had disappeared from
[3:53] New York. A breakthrough finally came in
[3:57] the 20 twenties thanks to emerging forensic genealogy
[4:01] technology. In 2022, the Santa Cruz County
[4:06] Sheriff's Office partnered with Othram to try to identify the
[4:10] long lost Jane Doe. Using forensic genetic
[4:13] genealogy, scientists were able to extract a comprehensive DNA
[4:17] profile from the girl's degraded remains.
[4:21] Investigators on the ground followed these leads to locate
[4:24] living family members of the Jane Doe and obtained reference
[4:28] DNA samples from them. Finally, nearly 30 years after
[4:33] the remains were found and almost 50 years after Laura
[4:37] O'Malley had vanished, the pieces lined up.
[4:42] In March 2025, officials announced that the once
[4:46] mysterious remains had been positively identified as Laura
[4:51] Ann O'Malley. Laura's case is now officially
[4:55] closed as a missing person case, but it has transitioned into a
[4:59] new phase. Police in California admit they
[5:03] still don't know exactly when or how Laura arrived in Santa Cruz
[5:07] County or how she lost her life there.
[5:11] Those details remain the final mystery.
[5:14] Authorities are continuing to gather information.
[5:18] At present, they're appealing to the public for anyone who might
[5:21] remember encountering a young girl from New York and
[5:23] California in the late 1970's. The hope is that this
[5:28] identification will eventually lead to justice, or at least a
[5:32] fuller story of what happened to Laura.
[5:35] And while this is just speculation on my part, I would
[5:38] hope that the authorities are conducting a full investigation
[5:42] of the stepfather, who may very well still be alive.
[5:49] Edna Schubert, an 88 year old widow from North Bay Shore, Long
[5:53] Island, was found brutally slain in her home on December 12th,
[5:58] 2003. Concerned neighbors had noticed
[6:02] her front door left ajar and a window shattered, prompting them
[6:07] to check on her welfare. The victim was a retired
[6:10] Department of Motor Vehicles employee who had lived alone
[6:14] since her husband's passing years earlier.
[6:17] She had no children of her own but was a beloved figure on her
[6:21] St. affectionately known as the Grandma of the neighborhood for
[6:25] her kindness toward local kids. Simply put, she was the sort of
[6:30] neighbor everyone wanted to have and that everyone cared about.
[6:36] Or at least that's what one would assume, isn't it?
[6:40] Suffolk County detectives launched an extensive
[6:43] investigation in the aftermath of Schubert's slaying.
[6:46] Crime scene specialists carefully documented the scene
[6:50] and collected every piece of evidence they could find,
[6:53] including latent fingerprints and blood samples left by the
[6:56] intruder. Despite these efforts, no
[7:00] suspect was identified in 2003. Unsurprisingly, Edna Schubert
[7:06] had no known enemies, and there were no obvious suspects.
[7:10] Early forensic tests failed to match the fingerprints or DNA to
[7:15] any known offender in law enforcement databases, leaving
[7:18] investigators without a viable target.
[7:21] As weeks turned into months and then years, the trail grew cold.
[7:26] The case that had once gripped Long Island gradually faded from
[7:30] headlines, but it was never forgotten by the authorities.
[7:35] By the late 2000's, the slaying of Edna Schubert had become one
[7:40] of the region's most notorious unsolved crimes.
[7:45] As the 20th anniversary of the crime approached, the file on
[7:48] Edna Schubert remained dusty and unresolved, much to the dismay
[7:53] of the community and the authorities.
[7:55] However, IN2023A spark of hope arrived from a detective who
[7:59] refused to let the case die. Retired Suffolk County Police
[8:03] Detective Pat Albergo, one of the original investigators,
[8:07] contacted the department's cold case unit.
[8:11] He urged them to take a fresh look at the evidence using
[8:14] modern forensic technology, which he believed was the key to
[8:17] cracking the case. Albergo's persistence set in
[8:21] motion a long overdue re examination of the clues
[8:25] preserved since 2003. Detective Brendan O'Hara
[8:29] reopened the investigation and teamed up with retired
[8:33] fingerprint expert Detective Timothy Kelly to pour over the
[8:38] old evidence. They focused on a latent
[8:41] fingerprint that had been lifted from the crime scene years ago,
[8:44] which initially had been deemed too blurred to yield a match.
[8:48] Using advanced high definition upscaling, the investigators
[8:52] took a new high resolution photograph of the old
[8:55] fingerprint and ran it through a state-of-the-art fingerprint
[8:59] database. And yeah, this stuff was
[9:02] basically science fiction. 22 years ago when the crime
[9:05] occurred, it was basically something you'd see on an
[9:08] episode of CSI, but now it's reality.
[9:13] This time, the result was very different.
[9:16] The print came back as a match to a man named Raul Ayala, a
[9:20] known criminal, confirming a major breakthrough in the case.
[9:25] The suspect turned out to have been in law enforcement records
[9:28] already. Interestingly, Ayala's
[9:31] fingerprints were on file from a prior arrest years before Edna's
[9:35] slaying. But the forensic tech just
[9:38] wasn't where it is today. With Raul Ayala now identified
[9:43] as a prime suspect, investigators dug into his
[9:46] background. They discovered that Ayala had
[9:49] actually been Schubert's neighbor back in 2003.
[9:53] He lived roughly 200 yards from her home at the time of the
[9:56] slaying. Not long after the crime, Ayala
[9:59] left New York and eventually settled in the small town of
[10:02] Talmo, Georgia. Detectives now needed enough
[10:06] hard evidence to secure an arrest and conviction.
[10:09] Since the fingerprint alone wasn't enough to guarantee
[10:12] conviction, the team turned back to the biological evidence from
[10:16] the scene. The blood stains on Schubert's
[10:19] clothing had been preserved and the DNA had been tested before,
[10:24] but that had never led to an identification.
[10:27] Using updated DNA analysis tools, the Suffolk County Crime
[10:32] Lab confirmed those stains contained a mixture of Edna's
[10:35] blood and DNA from an unknown male perpetrator.
[10:40] Armed with this knowledge, police organized a covert plan
[10:43] to verify Ayala's DNA. In August 2024, Suffolk County
[10:49] detectives traveled to Georgia to discreetly obtain a sample of
[10:53] Ayala's DNA for comparison. Investigators finally closed in
[10:58] on him. They kept Ayala under
[11:00] surveillance and collected items he discarded in the trash.
[11:04] These items included lottery scratch off tickets and plastic
[11:08] bottles used to gather his DNA without tipping him off.
[11:12] Back in New York, forensic analysts found that DNA from a
[11:16] tossed out Gatorade bottle matched the unidentified male
[11:20] DNA from the 2003 crime scene. This conclusively provided a
[11:25] link between Ayala and Schubert on the day in question.
[11:30] At last, with the forensic evidence firmly in hand,
[11:33] authorities moved to take Raul Ayala into custody.
[11:37] On January 16th, 2025, Suffolk County Police detectives, aided
[11:43] by local Georgia deputies, arrested the 51 year old Ayala
[11:47] at his residence in Talmo, GA. The suspect was then transported
[11:52] back to New York to face justice after more than 20 years living
[11:57] freely after the crime. On February 7th, 2025, Ayala was
[12:04] formally indicted in a Suffolk County courtroom on a number of
[12:07] counts related to Edna Schubert's slaying.
[12:11] During a packed arraignment proceeding, Ayala pleaded not
[12:15] guilty and was ordered held without bail by the judge given
[12:19] the severity of the case. If convicted on the charge, Raul
[12:24] Ayala faces a sentence of life in prison without the
[12:27] possibility of parole. As of now, it's unclear if the
[12:32] prosecution has any idea why they believe Ayala perpetrated
[12:36] this horrific act on a sweet old woman, but I suspect we may find
[12:40] out soon enough. Ayala remains innocent of all
[12:44] charges until he's proven guilty in a court of law.
[12:49] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here with a quick reminder to hit the
[12:53] notification bell and turn on all notifications for my
[12:56] channel. Also remember to check out my
[12:59] other channels Lazy Chill Zone and Lazy Chill History for
[13:03] Unsolved Mysteries and historical content respectively.
[13:10] All right, quick break. Knock knock, who's there?
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[13:20] No awkward interruptions, just non-stop laughs from your
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[13:31] Or go to amazon.com/ad Free Comedy.
[13:34] That's amazon.com/ad Free Comedy to catch up on the latest
[13:37] episodes without the ads. On a Sunday morning in December
[13:42] 1982, a real estate agent surveying a tract of land in
[13:46] Loxahatchee, FL stumbled upon a gruesome scene.
[13:51] Scattered human remains were found strewn in a wooded area
[13:54] about 140 yards off a remote Rd. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's
[13:59] Office responded and determined the victim was a woman who had
[14:03] been shot in the head. The remains were badly
[14:06] decomposed, likely the result of being exposed to the elements in
[14:11] animal activity, with bones found along the gravel roadway
[14:14] and in the brush. Investigators had little to go
[14:18] on besides the skeletal remains and a few personal items left at
[14:22] the scene. A number of pieces of jewelry
[14:27] were recovered with the victim, some of which were highly
[14:29] distinctive. These included a wristwatch, a
[14:33] gold necklace with an anchor pendant and a key pendant, and
[14:37] two rings, one in a small silver heart shape and the other a gold
[14:42] ring set with four gemstone pieces.
[14:46] One of the rings was speculated to have been a wedding or
[14:48] engagement ring. These belongings, along with
[14:52] evidence from an autopsy suggesting the woman had given
[14:55] birth a number of times, LED detectives to nickname her the
[14:59] jeweled Mom. Despite the intimate and
[15:03] possibly distinctive nature of the jewelry, no immediate
[15:06] identification could be made. Forensic experts determined the
[15:10] victim was a white female, estimated to be between 25 to 40
[15:15] years old and around 5 feet tall, with brown hair.
[15:19] She had signs of a past back injury and even traces of pink
[15:23] frosted nail Polish on her fingernails, suggesting she took
[15:27] care of her appearance. A forensic dentist charted her
[15:30] dental work, which included crowns, fillings, and
[15:34] extractions, and circulated the chart to over 2000 dentists
[15:39] across Florida in hopes of finding a match.
[15:43] Unfortunately, despite this significant effort, no leads
[15:47] emerged from the dental records or any other of her distinctive
[15:51] features. From the start, it was clear
[15:55] this was a slaying, but the victim's identity and the
[15:59] perpetrator remained a mystery. In 2013, a sample from the
[16:05] woman's femur was submitted for DNA analysis in another attempt
[16:10] to identify her, again without success.
[16:14] All the while, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office kept the
[16:17] case open and in the public eye. The unsolved case in Loxahatchee
[16:22] didn't exist in a vacuum. In May 1982, just months before
[16:28] the Jeweled Mom was found, another set of female remains
[16:31] had been discovered in the same general area.
[16:35] Those remains, later identified as 17 year old Tina Marie Beebe,
[16:40] were found in a shallow grave not far from a property owned by
[16:43] Christopher Wilder, an infamous serial predator.
[16:47] Wilder, dubbed the Beauty Queen Killer, would go on to abduct
[16:52] and slay at least eight young women in a cross country crime
[16:55] spree in 1984. Given the proximity of the 1982
[17:01] Loxahatchee crime scene to Wilder's land, investigators
[17:05] eventually took notice. They suspected that the
[17:08] unidentified jeweled mom might have been an earlier victim of
[17:13] Wilder. Wilder's known victims were
[17:16] generally younger women, teens and 20s, and he died in 1984
[17:21] during a shootout with police never confessing to any crimes
[17:25] beyond those known. Nonetheless, the possibility of
[17:30] his involvement in this 1982 case lingered as an unsettling
[17:34] theory. But I'll come back to this
[17:36] shortly. Investigators also kept an open
[17:40] mind that the perpetrator could have been someone else entirely,
[17:44] given that she wore what appeared to be a wedding ring.
[17:47] Detectives also considered any potential spouse as a prime
[17:50] suspect. By the twenty 20s, forensic
[17:56] science had advanced dramatically, offering New Hope
[17:59] for the Loxahatchee Jane Doe. In 2021, the Palm Beach County
[18:05] Sheriff's Office partnered with Othrum, a private laboratory
[18:08] specializing in forensic genetic genealogy, to finally crack the
[18:13] identity of the jeweled mom. Using trace evidence from the
[18:17] remains that had been preserved, Othrum scientists were able to
[18:21] extract DNA and build a comprehensive genetic profile.
[18:26] It was then used in genealogical databases to find familial
[18:30] connections. The process generated leads to a
[18:33] particular family and investigators then conducted
[18:36] some good old fashioned police work.
[18:39] They interviewed potential family members identified
[18:42] through the DNA matches and obtained a reference DNA sample
[18:46] from one relative. Eventually, by comparing that
[18:50] relative's DNA to the unknown victim's profile, they achieved
[18:54] A conclusive match. In late 2022, after 39 years of
[18:59] anonymity, the Sheriff's Office received the news it had been
[19:02] chasing the Jeweled mom. Jane Doe's identity was
[19:06] confirmed. She was Leona Jean Keller, born
[19:10] on December 13th, 1945 and 37 years old at the time she was
[19:15] slain. Originally from Pennsylvania,
[19:19] Leona had married and lived in South Florida in the 1970s.
[19:24] She was a married mother of four whose family members had
[19:27] reported her missing long ago. However, for reasons that aren't
[19:32] yet fully understood, the missing persons report and the
[19:36] Jane Doe case were never connected at the time.
[19:40] Yet the identification, while a milestone, is only 1 chapter of
[19:45] the story. The biggest question remains
[19:48] unanswered. Who was responsible for her
[19:51] death and why? Leona's remains were discovered
[19:54] close to property. Christopher Wilder owned his
[19:58] violent methodology, often involving remote disposal sites
[20:02] close to where Keller's remains were found, very closely
[20:05] matched. This crime, combined with the
[20:08] circumstantial evidence about Wilder this strongly suggests
[20:12] that this isn't a situation where the spouse or a close
[20:15] personal associate was involved. That said, there is one thing
[20:21] that makes me believe that it could have potentially been
[20:23] someone other than Wilder. Leona was 39.
[20:28] And the vast majority of Wilder's victims fell in the
[20:30] late teens to early 20s range, with only one confirmed victim
[20:35] in her early 30s. On a quiet morning in September
[20:42] 2018, a telephone technician working behind a vacant house on
[20:47] Detroit's east side made a grim discovery.
[20:50] In the overgrown backyard of a rundown property on Camden St.,
[20:54] the worker stumbled upon what looked like a human skull.
[20:58] Detroit police were called to the scene where they confirmed
[21:01] the presence of skeletal human remains.
[21:04] Scattered bones and a skull lay hidden behind the empty home,
[21:09] telling a silent story of a life cut short.
[21:12] Investigators quickly determined the remains belong to a young
[21:16] woman. However, there was no
[21:18] identification, no purse or ID left behind, just bones.
[21:24] The question that loomed over the scene was obvious.
[21:28] Who was she and what happened to her?
[21:32] The Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office took custody
[21:35] of the remains and began trying to piece together the story.
[21:40] Forensic experts estimated the victim was a black female,
[21:44] likely between 18 and 22 years old at the time of death.
[21:49] She was tall and investigators believed that she may have stood
[21:53] 6/1, an uncommon stature that investigators hoped might stand
[21:58] out in missing person reports. The medical examiner looked for
[22:02] any signs of trauma or foul play on the bones.
[22:06] Due to the advanced state of decomposition, it was difficult
[22:10] to determine an exact cause of death from the skeletal remains
[22:13] alone. Police searched the area for any
[22:17] other evidence and checked missing persons databases for
[22:20] young women who fit the description.
[22:23] The case was entered into the name US Database as an
[22:25] unidentified female and she became another Jane Doe from
[22:29] Detroit. Leads were scarce and months
[22:32] turned into years with no match for the unknown woman.
[22:36] One early theory focused on a known missing person, Jasmine
[22:40] Moody, a 19 year old college student from Texas who had
[22:44] vanished in Detroit in 2014. Jasmine's disappearance had
[22:49] haunted her family and the authorities for years, and some
[22:53] wondered if this Jane Doe was her.
[22:56] However, DNA comparisons and dental records eventually ruled
[23:00] out Jasmine Moody as the unidentified victim.
[23:05] Other names of missing young women were considered and
[23:08] eliminated as well, and with each passing year, the trail
[23:12] grew colder. For more than six years, the
[23:16] young woman's identity and story remained unknown.
[23:19] Her skull and bones sat in storage at the medical
[23:22] examiner's office while her case file gathered dust in the
[23:25] Detroit Police Department's cold case unit.
[23:29] Investigators periodically revisited the file, hoping new
[23:32] information or technology might shed light on who she was.
[23:38] By 2023, the Detroit Police Department decided to try a new
[23:42] approach that has started solving cold cases around the
[23:45] country. At this point in the video, I'm
[23:49] sure you can guess what it was. But if you can't, yeah, it was
[23:53] forensic genetic genealogy again.
[23:57] In late 2023 and early 2024, this painstaking research
[24:02] finally yielded A promising lead.
[24:05] A possible relative of the Jane Doe had been identified.
[24:09] Detectives reached out and located this family member,
[24:13] explaining the situation. The relative agreed to provide
[24:17] ADNA sample for comparison, which would lead to a major
[24:21] breakthrough. In March 2025, nearly seven
[24:26] years after her remains were first found, the Detroit Police
[24:30] Department announced a major development.
[24:33] Yet another Jane Doe had her identity restored at last.
[24:36] Thanks to forensic genealogy, the skeletal remains were
[24:40] conclusively identified as Tiffany Tillman, a 26 year old
[24:44] woman who had likely died around late 2017 or 2018.
[24:49] Tiffany Tillman was born on February 8th, 1992 and would
[24:54] have been in her mid 20s at the time of her disappearance and
[24:57] death. While identifying Tiffany
[25:00] Tillman marked a huge step forward, the case was far from
[25:04] fully solved. With her identity known, the
[25:07] investigation is now shifting focus to how Tiffany died and
[25:12] who, if anyone, was responsible. As of now, the authorities have
[25:17] not yet announced A cause of death in Tiffany's case, or
[25:21] whether they had any suspects in mind.
[25:24] The circumstances of her body's discovery, hidden behind a
[25:28] vacant house, strongly suggests that something sinister could
[25:32] have happened.

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