Man Arrested For 1980 Murder! DNA and Jailhouse Snitch Finger Suspect in 46 Year Cold Case
Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan
CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
In October 1980 Charles Barnes is found stabbed to death in his Tampa, Florida home. Police discover the 39-year-old naked on the floor with a knife lodged in his chest and the scene shows signs of struggle. Detectives find blood soaked bedding and beer cans with fingerprints of an unknown persons. When no suspect is connected to the fingerprints the case goes cold. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack go back through the evidence available at the time, and discuss how the old evidence contained everything needed to arrest a suspect more than 45 years after the murder.
Transcript Highlights
00:03.51 Introduction
01:08.12 A towel with DNA
05:10.78 Forensic technology available 1980
10:07.53 Latent prints
15:15.38 Simpson Crime Scene 1994 Dennis Fong
20:30.66 Using X-Ray instead of photo in court
25:06.30 Finger prints didn't hit
30:20.12 2009 Prints came back to Robert Bear
35:23.00 Fingernail clippings from victim
40:00.04 DNA match to suspect
45:12.79 Evidence places Robert Bear at crime scene
47:01.86 Conclusion
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:05.7 | Body Facts with Joseph Scott Moore. |
| 0:10.3 | I've got a bad habit of leaving towels around the house. |
| 0:16.5 | I don't know what it is. |
| 0:17.7 | I just, you know, I'll use a towel and just kind of blade on the floor or I won't go hang it up. |
| 0:27.1 | And, you know, Kimmy never really jumps on me about it or anything like that. |
| 0:31.2 | But I always try to catch myself. |
| 0:34.0 | In the past, I didn't know it. |
| 0:35.3 | Maybe I'm just getting older and I'm getting forgetful. Next thing you know, I'm going to be walking around the yard. |
| 0:40.3 | But you never know how these things will go. |
| 0:43.3 | But today I'm faced with a case that I want to tell you about my friends. |
| 0:49.3 | It's a case that occurred all the way back in 1980 down in the Tampa Bay, Florida area, that has just landed on our radar. |
| 1:01.6 | And it does, in fact, involve a towel. |
| 1:06.2 | And contained within that towel is the stuff of life the molecular blueprint that we all have |
| 1:16.2 | of course I'm talking about DNA and this DNA may just have unlocked a mystery that has been unsolved for these many, many years since. |
| 1:34.1 | I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybags. |
| 1:41.0 | Well, Dave, here we are. We've got another case involving, you know, like I said, the stuff of life. |
| 1:49.4 | Isn't it amazing how many of these cases we cover now where that molecule is the linchpin that holds everything together |
| 2:01.5 | where we're going to be able to go back |
| 2:05.0 | and hopefully find some answers |
| 2:09.3 | to these mysteries that have existed |
... |
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