Patrick Gilham arrest for Roxanne Wood murder – Inside how STUDENTS used Post-it notes and cigarette clue to find killer

A MAN has been sentenced to prison in a 1987 cold case murder as it’s been revealed that college students used Post-it notes and a cigarette clue to find the killer.

Patrick Wayne Gilham was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in the death of Roxanne Wood.

Copyright/WDNU 16 NewsRoxanne Wood (pictured) was 30 when she was murdered in her home[/caption]

Copyright/WDNU 16 NewsGilham allegedly forcibly entered Wood’s home on February 20, 1987[/caption]

Copyright/Michigan State PoliceThe 67-year-old pleaded no contest this week to second degree murder[/caption]

Gilham, 67, was charged in February with open murder and breaking and entering of an occupied dwelling house for the murder, WNDU reported.

The charges stem from February 20, 1987, when Terry Wood found his wife dead in their Niles Township home.

They had driven separately to go bowling and Roxanne Wood, 30, returned home first.

Police say her husband found her with throat cut.

The case remained an active investigation for decades, police said, and it was reexamined in 2001 and 2020 by investigators from Michigan State Police.

Students in Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program ultimately helped detectives find Gilham on their first case working together.

The students collected and sorted piles of evidence, including digitized post-it notes and unlimited case files.

Evidence from the scene was examined forensically using genetic genealogy by Identifinders International LLC and the MSP Forensic Laboratory in Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to a police statement.

After Gilham was identified as a suspect, he was “surveilled extensively” by undercover state police troopers and interviewed twice.

During this time, he discarded a cigarette that detectives collected.

They then used the DNA from the cigarette to confirm that DNA found at the crime scene belonged to Gilham, Det Christensen told NBC News.

Gilham was arrested in February, just days away from the 35th anniversary of the killing.

Identifiers International said in a statement that the case was a “landmark in the use of forensic genetic genealogy (FGG) as the decades-old DNA sample used to identify Roxanne’s assailant was very low level and highly degraded, representing the contents of only a few cells of his body.”

The organization’s president, Colleen Fitzpatrick, said it was the toughest technical challenge they’d faced.

“But it shows that we should never give up hope,” Fitzpatrick said.

“We are grateful to the Michigan State Police for having faith in us for the careful decision making it took to process the DNA and solve the case.”