Helene Pruszynski.
Nearly 40 years afterHelene Pruszynskiwas brutally murdered, her friends and family finally found justice with the 2019 arrest of James Clanton, a truck driver who killed the aspiring journalist in 1980.
“It never got any easier,” her sister Janet Johnson told the judge at Clanton’s sentencing in 2020. “It was as if someone had reached in and torn our hearts out.”
On Jan. 16, 1980, Pruszynski was kidnapped as she walked home from her bus stop after work. The next day, her body was found in a field. Her hands had been tied behind her, and she had been raped and stabbed multiple times in the back. Investigators collected evidence from her body and clothing, but it was before the age of advanced DNA analysis, and Pruszynski’s case subsequently went cold.
The case is explored in tonight’s episode ofPeople Magazine Investigates: Blood Ties, airing at 10 ET/9 CT on Investigation Discovery and streaming on discovery+. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)
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In 2017, Douglas County investigators reopened the case and were able to upload the DNA evidence into genealogy databases that helped them identify Pruszynski’s killer’s relatives.
Two years later, investigators arrested Clanton in Florida.
Shortly after his arrest, Clanton, who had lived in Colorado at the time of Helene’s murder under the name Curtis White, pleaded guilty to Pruszynski’s murder. In July, he was sentenced to life in prison.
For more on how Helene Pruszynski’s murder was solved, watch the episode ofPeople Magazine Investigates: Blood Ties, airing tonight at 10 ET/9 CT on Investigation Discovery and streaming on discovery+.
source: people.com
