Mother of woman slain 36 years ago in Belleville hopes DNA analysis can identify killer

Thirty-six years ago, Audrey Cardenas moved to Belleville to start her career in journalism.

She had just graduated from Texas A&M University and landed a job as an intern reporter with the Belleville News-Democrat.

But after living in Belleville for just over a week, the 24-year-old disappeared. She didn’t show up for work on Monday, June 20, 1988.

Cardenas’ body was found on Sunday, June 26, 1988, in a creek bed at Belleville East High School, where investigators believe she had been jogging. She was an avid runner who would log six miles a day. Decomposition kept the medical examiner from determining the cause of death. Findings indicated she did not die from a blow to the head.

Now Cardenas’ mother, Billie Fowler, a Texas resident, wants the Belleville Police Department to see if advancements in DNA technology applied to identify suspects in criminal cases could be used to solve her daughter’s murder.

Belleville Police Chief Matt Eiskant said Fowler’s request to reopen the cold case is being considered and that he would talk to her about the steps the department could take. One possibility would be consulting with the Illinois State Police, he said.

A final decision will be based on whether investigators have “new information or new technology,” Eiskant said.

It’s “glimmer of hope” is how Fowler described her reaction to Eiskant’s comments. She had been feeling ignored, frustrated and wondering if she needed to camp out on Eiskant’s doorstep to refocus investigators’ attention on her loss.

One man, Rodney Woidtke, was convicted of killing Cardenas, but he was later acquitted in a retrial after serving 13 years in prison. He died in 2014 at age 53.

A second man, Dale Anderson, who died at 71 of prostate cancer in a state prison last year while serving a life sentence for killing a Belleville woman and her son, was obsessed with the Cardenas case and had tried to frame his bosses for the killing. Also, he once was charged with impersonating a police officer after calling Cardenas’ father. A former FBI analyst who once led the agency’s team that profiled serial killers, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1999 that Anderson is her likely killer.

An Illinois State Police analyst testified in 2001 that DNA evidence showed Woidtke didn’t have contact with Cardenas. But that was 23 years ago and Fowler noted DNA technology has improved “tremendously.”

In one new development in DNA technology, analysts can make an identification with as little as 15 to 20 cells, according to an expert. Fowler would like to see if DNA analysts can find evidence linking a suspect to her daughter’s death.

“I keep up to date with it, because I have a vested interest in it,” she said. “And, you know, the things I read and the things I hear on the news and other resources, it’s incredible what they can do with DNA.”

Fowler follows news reports about police departments using DNA evidence to solve cases from the 1980s like her daughter’s.

“I mean, they can use the tiniest piece of things that you’d never even think would have DNA on it,” she said.

Fowler thinks Anderson is a “prime suspect” and she believes “in my heart” Woidtke was innocent.

“To me, Dale Anderson is the prime suspect in my mind because I know he’s capable of doing something that horrible,” Fowler said. “So that needs to be put to bed one way or the other. And DNA can do that.”

Police response

Eiskant said he couldn’t place a timeline on when a decision would be made to reopen the Cardenas case. He also said he would not publicly release anything about the investigation.

“I understand that she wants some questions answered, and it takes time,” Eiskant said of Fowler. “This case was a 1988 case, and there’s no new fresh leads. If there are fresh leads that come upon this case, we would definitely look into it and if there’s any new technology, we would definitely look into it.

“But I understand her frustration. And, you know, as a police chief, I want justice for everybody and if we can look at this case, or look at parts of this case to bring her some closure, we’ll definitely do that.”

Eiskant said the department has a vault where investigators keep all evidence from homicide cases, including Cardenas’ death. He would have to find out what evidence remains that “would be probative to test for DNA.”

The chief also said he doesn’t have an opinion “that one person or another” killed Cardenas but he has spoken to officers who originally investigated the case and they believe it was Woidtke.

Fowler, who turned 80 on Friday, said she understands why Eiskant has not said exactly when a decision would be made but added, “obviously, I’d like it to see to be in my lifetime.”

“Those words are pretty encouraging,” she said of Eiskant’s remarks. “I don’t want to get up a lot of false hope only to have that hope shattered a year or two down the road.”

Advances in DNA technology

Bill Christine, who started his journalism career with the East St. Louis Journal in the early 1960s and retired from the Los Angeles Times, is writing a book about Cardenas’ death as well as the unsolved homicide of another woman, 19-year-old Kristina Povolish, whose body was found in 1987 in St. Clair County.

Like Fowler, Christine believes investigators should examine whether the advances in DNA technology could shed light on the deaths of Cardenas and Povolish. Christine often shares with Fowler news reports from across the country about police departments that have solved cold cases by reviewing DNA evidence.

DNA is “the genetic material present in the cells of all living organisms,” according to a report by the National Institute of Justice, the research agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. “DNA is the fundamental building block for an individual’s entire genetic makeup. A person’s DNA is the same in every cell.”

And every individual’s DNA is “unique,” with the exception of identical twins, according to Kathleen Corrado, executive director of the Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute at Syracuse University in New York.

“If we are able to analyze the DNA left at the crime scene, we can get what we call a DNA profile that will be specific to an individual,” Corrado said. “And then we can compare it to various different individuals, whether they are victims or suspects or databases to try to see if we can identify who that DNA belongs to.”

Corrado noted that she has not investigated Cardenas’ death and could not comment on the specifics of that case. She outlined several developments in the DNA field, however, that have improved in recent decades.

“There definitely has been significant improvements over the years that really makes it important that we revisit these old cases to see if there’s any evidence available that can be retested now,” she said.

Corrado, who previously worked as a DNA analyst on a cold case task force in New York, said reviewing evidence is something all investigators should consider.

She gave these highlights regarding the capabilities of DNA technology today:

▪ Investigators now can use “much smaller amounts” of DNA to get a match as compared to when investigators first began using the technology.

“We only need about 15 to 20 cells that someone’s left behind to be able to get a relatively good DNA profile,” Corrado said.

This is in contrast to when investigators needed a blood sample the size of a coin to get a DNA match.

“While we still use blood and saliva and things like that, we now can even get DNA just from cells that are left behind, like when someone touches something,” Corrado said.

A piece of clothing worn by someone could be tested to see if someone’s cells are on the clothing, she said.

Analysts can also check for DNA if someone has just handled something like the handle of the weapon, such as a knife or screwdriver.

▪ Analysts also can now make a DNA match “from samples that have been degraded,” Corrado said.

If evidence has been outside in the heat or the evidence is old, the DNA can become “fragmented,” but analysts can often get results from degraded DNA that previously could not have been used.

▪ Corrado said investigators now have access to DNA profiles in a federal database that wasn’t available at the time of Cardenas’ death. The federal Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, has about 20 million profiles, she said.

▪ Along with this federal database, investigators can get access to DNA profiles in a private company’s database of people doing genetic genealogy searches. Corrado said a suspect may not have entered a sample in the private company’s database, but a relative may have and investigators can make a link.

▪ The DNA technology that is available today has not advanced to a point where exhuming a crime victim’s body decades after burial could yield new evidence connecting a suspect to a crime.

“There would be little value in exhuming the body to look for evidence left by the suspect,” Corrado said. “Any biological evidence on the body would not likely be viable.

“The best chance for probative evidence would be from clothing or swabbings taken at the time of the crime that have been stored appropriately.”

▪ Like the technology used in DNA research, the process of comparing a suspect’s fingerprints left at a scene with fingerprints in databases has improved, Corrado said.

The “matching algorithms are a lot better,” she said. “Even if someone had had a fingerprint from a perpetrator that they searched 20 years ago, we would always encourage them to reload it and re-search it today.”

A mother’s memories

Fowler said her daughter was “totally dedicated to anything that she tackled.”

“So whatever she took on, that was her passion,” she said. “And she would not let go of it until she was completely finished, whether if it was a school project, whatever it was, it was going to be finished and it was going to be completed and done in the right way.”

Cardenas was petite and ran everyday unless there was bad weather. She only weighed about 100 pounds and because of her petite size, people would notice her, Fowler said.

“She had beautiful black hair and a lot of it,” Fowler said. “I wouldn’t call her glamorous, but she was very cute.”

Fowler described her daughter’s personality as “very friendly, outgoing but cautious.” She would make friends with someone as soon as “she felt that you were an OK person.”

Fowler proudly remembers how her daughter graduated with a degree in journalism and was starting her career.

“I think in early high school, like her freshman year, we discussed the fact that she wanted to pursue journalism as a career and I encouraged her of course,” Fowler said. “In my mind, I thought that might change because a lot of times kids do change their mind over time but she stuck with that.

“I think she would have had a wonderful career.”