Fifty years to a verdict.
It took more than half a century to get here.
The path to justice for Martha Morrison began not in a courtroom, but in a lab—when the newly recovered remains of the unidentified Dole Valley Jane Doe were tested for DNA and uploaded into the national missing persons database. That profile crossed paths with another: DNA from Martha’s brother, honoring a decades-old promise to his mother that he would never stop searching for her “baby.” The match led to an extraordinary step—exhuming Martha Morrison’s father to confirm, beyond doubt, that Martha was the young woman found in Dole Valley, lying beside Carol Valenzuela.
Her identification came at a critical moment. Warren Forrest, long suspected in multiple murders, was up for parole, still convinced no one would fight for these women. But the cold case unit wasn’t done. Among them was retired prosecutor Denny Hunter, who remembered something from the Krista Blake trial decades earlier: the dart gun Forrest used on survivor Susan was still in evidence, with a small, overlooked drop of blood on its grip. Testing revealed it belonged to Martha Morrison. Forrest was finally charged with her murder.
Episode 8 takes us inside the trial—a high-stakes attempt to convict a man who had eluded justice for decades. Forrest had been convicted of only one murder before this. Now, the state’s case pulled from dusty files, faded memories, and survivors’ testimony. The jury’s decision would speak not just for Martha, but for every voice silenced in Dole Valley.
The verdict is not the end. This case isn’t over.
