On the morning of July 8, 1972, a woman driving along a country road in Allen County, Indiana, spotted a woman and a small child in a ditch. The mother, 26-year-old Jeanie Baylor, had been shot and killed. Her three-year-old daughter, Jodie, was beside her, alive and physically unharmed. The previous evening, Jeanie had left Indianapolis in a borrowed car with her little girl, planning to visit her parents about 100 miles away in Bluffton, Indiana.
She never arrived. Her husband, Richard Baylor, found the car the next morning on Interstate 69 with the hood up and no one inside. The distance between the car and the location where Jeanie’s body was found became one of the case’s greatest mysteries. The car sat in Grant County, while her body was discovered in a ditch dozens of miles away.
Police never publicly explained the gap. In 1972, investigators had fingerprints, footprints, and tire tracks, but DNA testing was still years away from being used in law enforcement. They collected Jeanie’s clothing as evidence, a decision that would ultimately prove vital, though no one could have known it then. Richard Baylor quickly became a person of interest because he and Jeanie had been separated for about three months.
He told NBC News decades later that he cleared himself by explaining where he had been at the time. Police have not publicly confirmed his account. Over the years, a lab managed to pull a partial DNA profile from Jeanie’s clothing. That partial profile was enough to eliminate the main suspect in the case, but not enough to identify anyone else.
With no other leads, the case went cold. Forensic genetic genealogy, the technique that would eventually crack the case, first made headlines in 2018 when it helped police arrest the Golden State Killer. The method works by comparing crime scene DNA to public databases where people have voluntarily shared their genetic information, then building family trees through distant relatives. In 2024, the Indiana State Police Laboratory returned to Jeanie’s clothing, which had been preserved for more than five decades.
Using improved technology, they built what police described as a much stronger DNA profile. That profile was sent to Identifinders International, a California-based forensic genealogy company founded by Colleen Fitzpatrick. By early 2025, the genealogical work produced a name: Fred Allen Lanman. According to police, he was 25 years old in the summer of 1972, born in the Anderson, Indiana area, and living in Michigan at the time of the crime.
The DNA found on Jeanie’s clothing was his. There was just one complication. Fred Lanman had been dead for 40 years. Lanman was killed in Detroit in 1985, according to a Detroit News article from May 6 of that year.
Two men were charged in his death following an argument over property. He was 37 years old. Police said there was no known connection between Jeanie and Lanman. They were strangers.
Jeanie was 26 and a mother. Lanman, according to investigators, had a significant criminal history, though police have not detailed what that involved. The Allen County Prosecutor’s Office issued a clear statement: if Fred Lanman were alive, he would be charged with Jeanie’s murder. Because he is dead, there can be no trial, no indictment, no conviction.
On April 16, 2025, the Indiana State Police announced that the cold case team had identified Jeanie Baylor’s killer. Sergeant Wes Roller, a state police spokesman, wrote on social media that the family finally had answers after years of questions. Richard Baylor, then 79, told NBC News he felt mixed emotions. He was totally relieved the truth had been uncovered, but also upset that Lanman was dead and could not answer for his actions.
He described Lanman’s violent death as the good side of it, and said he wished Jeanie’s parents and sister, who have all since passed away, had lived to hear the news. He added that it was a blessing for their daughter to finally know. Jodie, now in her 50s, was found alive at the scene as a three-year-old and has lived her life without knowing why her mother never came home. Colleen Fitzpatrick of Identifinders International said the case would never have been solved without forensic genetic genealogy.
Some questions remain unanswered. Police have not explained how Jeanie’s car ended up where it did, nor how her path crossed Lanman’s. They have not said whether Lanman has been linked to any other cases. What is certain is that the case, which never went to trial, now has a name attached to it.
After more than 53 years, the file that once said unknown now says known.