Hi, Cold Case listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just wanted to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files, as well as the A&E Classic Podcasts, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential, are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation Channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $3999 a year. And now on to the show.

There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved.

This is one of those rare stories.

On September 9, 1996, in a villa, Indiana,

Mary Lou Gardy decides to check in on her 86-year-old mother-in-law, Julia.

She hops in her truck and drives around the corner to Julia's farmhouse. On the outside,

everything appears to be normal. The inside, however, is a different story.

It looked like somebody had totally ransacked the house, and a and a lot of things were really like thrown around, torn up.

Things were out of the cabinet.

Mary Lou walks through the house towards Julia's bedroom.

In the bedroom, I saw on her bed. She was laying there, but there was a pillow over her head and a footstool on top of that pillow.

Julia Gardy lies dead, apparently smothered in her own bed.

It was just kind of like a nightmare, like something was happening, but it really shouldn't be

happening. Mary Lou races down the road to her sister-in-law, Ginny's house. All of a sudden,

Mary Lou came across the yard, screaming, Nana's been murdered, nanny's been murdered, and somebody robbed her house or something like that.

And I thought, what is she saying? And then finally we realized what she was saying.

And we called 911 at that point.

Call had just come in of the murder, notifying the Sheriff's Department of the murder.

Investigator Greg Bricker of the Indiana State Police Department

receives the call.

There was no reason for it to happen.

And Mrs. Gardy probably wouldn't have offered any resistance to this person whatsoever.

...