The murder of high school student Lori Billingsley — whose case went unsolved for more than 30 years — features tonight on Investigation Discovery’s Motives & Murders: Cracking the Case.
The 17-year-old’s body was found in a ditch in Aloha, west of Portland, Oregon, after being stabbed, strangled and sexually assaulted.
Neighbor Kenneth Lee Hicks, then 19, was a prime suspect in the case but police didn’t have enough evidence to charge him.
He was only snared after improvements in DNA technology which allowed detectives to link him to the crime.
Motives and Murders: Cracking the Case looks at how the investigation had to be dropped despite it meaning a killer was left on the loose.
And it looks at how Lori’s sister continued the fight to get justice for Lori even after the case went cold.
Hicks, of St Helens, was arrested at the age of 49 in February 2013. He pleaded not guilty but was convicted by a jury following an 11-day trial.
He was later sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison. Watch a clip from Motives and Murders: Cracking the Case below, which includes an actual police recording of detectives interviewing Hicks…
Motives & Murders: Cracking the Case, A Sister’s Promise, airs tonight at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery.