 It was April 24th, 2000, when Denise LeClaire stopped by the post office to drop off some Easter cards for the holiday. Her plan was to quickly drop off the cards then head home after a long day of work, but sadly Denise would never make it home. Investigators discovered a confusing crime scene a few hours later, sending detectives on a 23-year hunt for a criminal. Daniel and Denise LeClaire had both been living in Burton, Michigan for quite a while, quietly raising their small family and enjoying their lives together in a great little community. Well, I say it's a great community. In all reality, Burton is one of the most dangerous places you could possibly live in the entirety of the United States. Burton isn't a town, so to speak, it's more of a suburb or a community. But there are so many people living in this area that many people consider it to be its own city anyway. Burton is located within Flint, Michigan, and if you know anything about the United States, you probably already know that most people wouldn't dare visit Flint after dark. It's very similar to places like Chicago, Jackson, Mississippi, or even Little Rock, Arkansas, just crime on top of crime around every corner. But truthfully, in the area where Denise and Daniel lived, things weren't all that bad. Yes, there was crime, but as long as you kept your wits about you, you can make it around the area without encountering too much trouble. And for many years, Denise and Daniel did just that. They kept to themselves, didn't bother anyone else, and they didn't really have any problems. The couple had two young children, a three-year-old and an 11-year-old. Denise and Daniel had met back in the 1980s and had been together ever since. Both of them had graduated from Flint Northern High School, and both of them were raised near the popular Mott Park suburb. When they were still dating, Denise found out that she was pregnant with their first child. The two weren't quite ready to get married just yet, so they did their best to raise the child while they dated. But they did eventually tie the knot on Valentine's Day of 1996. But funny enough, they didn't have a traditional wedding ceremony. Instead, they opted to dedicate their lives to one another alongside 100 other couples as part of a local radio station promotion. Kind of a funny way to get married, but hey, to each their own, I guess. But regardless of their somewhat strange wedding, the two loved each other dearly and hoped to give their children the best lives they could possibly have. But unfortunately, this was little more than wishful thinking. In a tragic and heartbreaking turn of fate, these two young kids had their futures shattered, their lives irreversibly changed, and their mother taken. It was April 24, 2000. Denise LeClaire had been working at her shift at the nearby McClair and Medical Center. Denise seems to have loved her job, all things considered. And she mostly did office work at the Medical Center, with her official title simply being a clerk. I can't really find any additional information on what she actually did here, but it seems safe to assume she most likely helped patients check in or out of the hospital. Denise often worked a later afternoon shift, typically getting off work around 11 PM at night. Denise's plans for the evening of April 24 were to get off work, then head to the local post office to send out some mail that she'd been hanging on to. As she left work, she hopped into her Chevrolet Cavalier and headed off in the direction of the post office. This was the last that anyone would hear from Denise. According to investigators, she pulled into the post office parking lot, dropped off the cards, then began to leave. But she never made it out of the parking lot. A potential crime scene was reported later that evening when someone noticed that her car was left in the post office parking lot. The engine was running and the right side indicator was flashing. And the driver's window was partially rolled down. When officers arrived at the vehicle, they knew something had gone terribly wrong. Police traced the car's plates and headed to the LeClaire home. It was about 2 AM at this point. Daniel was awoken to a loud knock on the front door, and he was informed about his wife's disappearance. Police hoped that Daniel may have known where his wife had gone and why she left her car behind in such a strange state. But Daniel hadn't heard from her since earlier that day. He made sure detectives understood how strange the situation was, and they obviously agreed with him. Daniel was taken to the scene of the crime at about 5 AM, but there was virtually nothing that could be done. The crime had already been committed, and Denise was gone without a trace. Police collected all the evidence they could from the scene of the crime, but admittedly, there was very little for them to work with. Outside of Denise's own belongings, there wasn't anything left behind that seemed valuable to investigators. Her car had been left undisturbed, and there were no signs of forced entry into the vehicle. It was as if Denise had opened the door, walked away, and vanished into the fog. The only thing missing from the car was Denise's purse. Her cell phone was still in the car, and it was left plugged into the car's 12 volt jack. All these years later, her purse has still never been found. The most interesting aspect about the crime scene is that her car wasn't found in a parking spot. Nor was it even close to the building. Her car was actually left near the exit of the parking lot, with the indicator flashing as if she was about to turn into traffic. What's particularly curious about this is that not only was the door open and the window rolled down slightly, but the car was also in park. So it seems like Denise may have willingly exited the vehicle. After all, if she'd been forcefully pulled from the car, the way I see it, the car would have been left in drive. It may have even rolled away, but it wasn't, and it didn't. By the following day, police had a lead. An employee at a local doctor's office had called investigators after he noticed a pile of clothing lying in an open field about 20 feet from an office building. I'm not sure why the man thought this was suspicious. I'll be honest, if I noticed a pile of clothes in a field, I wouldn't have a second thought about it, but for whatever reason, the employee knew that something was a bit off. When detectives arrived, they found the clothing and collected it for evidence. But that's when they noticed something just a little bit further out in the field. As they continued searching through the grass and brush, they came across something they never would have expected. They found the remains of a woman wearing nothing but a trench coat and her underwear. The detective who was working the case at the time said that this was his first homicide investigation, so he had obviously never seen anything like this before. According to the officer at this point in time, cases like this were not common in Burton. Yes, there were crimes being committed every day, but it wasn't often that the crimes were taken this far. There's a major gap between petty theft and homicide, but what really took this case to the next level was what they found nearby Denise's remains. After officers collected Denise's remains and began to search the surrounding area, they found a few disturbing pieces of evidence that helped paint a much clearer picture of what had taken place in this field. Detective Don Schreiber located a nine-millimeter casing just a few feet from the crime scene. According to a coroner, Denise's life had been ended with a single round to the head. She lost her life instantly and likely never even knew what had happened. Officers managed to collect mountains of evidence, hundreds of public tips, and many photos to help tell Denise's story the best they could, but all of this amounted to nothing. Detective Schreiber says that they exhausted every tip and every lead that came in about Denise's case, but there simply wasn't enough evidence left behind to link the crime to any one person. That is, until they found something pretty strange near the dump site. As investigators were scouring the area in search of clues, they came across a small bundle of grass near Denise's body. In the middle of this grass tuft, they found a man's gold ring. Investigators took a look at the ring and found that it had a serial number etched into it. This was the evidence they needed to help blow the case open. They collected the ring for evidence and took it to the lab for further analysis and to have the serial number recorded. When officers determined the serial number, they contacted the manufacturer for assistance in locating the owner of the ring, but this is where things went from bad to worse. The manufacturer informed the officers that there was no way to trace the number. It wasn't a unique number. Thousands of these rings had been sold over the years and each of them were marked with this same number. So while this narrowed down the list of suspects from millions to thousands, it ultimately didn't help much. Investigators say they feel certain that the ring wasn't just ditched here by sheer coincidence. They have every reason to believe that the ring is directly related to Denise's case, but until they track down the owner, it's pretty well useless. As you may expect, Daniel, Denise's husband, was one of the first people suspected of taking Denise's life. After all, shortly after her demise, investigators learned that Denise hadn't been as honest and kind-hearted as she pretended to be. In fact, they learned that she'd been having an affair behind Daniel's back, providing a perfect motive for the crime. Worse yet, Daniel's only alibi for the evening of the crime was that he'd been at home with the couple's two children, but considering how late into the evening it was, it seems fairly safe to assume that they'd been in bed by this point, so the kids didn't have much information to offer. Police were never able to find anything that tied Daniel to the crime, even though his alibi was somewhat questionable. It's strangely common in cases like this for the spouse to be responsible, but that just wasn't true in this case. Police investigated Daniel rather heavily. They even asked him to submit to a lie detector test and a DNA swab, but both of these yielded no results. His DNA was not found at the scene of the crime, nor was it found on the ring. His lie detector test also came back clear, so these tests are obviously notoriously unreliable. Daniel has only ever spoken lovingly about his wife, recalling her as a very sweet and helpful person. He openly admitted to being a pain for police officers over the years, but only because he wants to see his wife's case solved. The only strange thing about Daniel in regards to Denise's case is that in 2003, he was arrested after he visited her grave. After sitting near the grave for a while, Daniel stood up and kicked down Denise's headstone, breaking a porcelain picture that had been erected in her memory. Daniel describes this as a nervous breakdown, but several locals believe that this was some sort of sign of guilt, but this has never been proven. And can you really blame the guy for something like this? I mean, grief can present itself in very unusual ways. Investigators have had a number of other suspects over the years, including one in 2010 that seemed so promising that investigators were allowed to exhume the grave of one of these men. Unfortunately, this still didn't lead to any breakthroughs in the case, but that brings us to the lead suspect in this case, an x-ray technician who worked with Denise at the hospital. In April of 2000, investigators learned that Ralph Venucci had shown some interest in Denise. Considering the two worked so closely together, they had a bit of a casual relationship at work, but Ralph wasn't satisfied with just being friends. Around the time of the crime, Ralph's life was in complete disarray. He'd been grieving the loss of his son who passed away in a drowning accident. This left him devastated for all the obvious reasons, but the grief didn't end with his son's tragic accident. The incident had weighed heavily on his marriage and ultimately led Ralph to get a divorce, his second divorce specifically. Ralph was doing his best to move on with his life and try to heal from the intense trauma that he had been through. And this led him to chatting up Denise and eventually asking her out. Ralph knew good and well that Denise was married, but he'd heard rumors that she was less than faithful. So he asked her out, but she turned him down. Investigators learned about all this by speaking with Denise's coworkers at the hospital. Almost everyone knew about Denise's affair, explaining that she openly spoke about how terrible her marriage was, describing it as tumultuous at one point, though the affairs definitely weren't helping things. When one of the coworkers was asked if they believed Ralph would have been capable of such a crime, they responded by saying, I really couldn't say. This response was extremely concerning to detectives, but they quickly learned that Ralph had an alibi for the evening. Just like Daniel, Ralph had been at home with his children that night. Investigators spoke with Ralph about Denise, but they revealed they had no reason to suspect that he was involved. His alibi checked out and they believed he was being fully transparent with them, showing no signs of lying or hiding any information. They said the same thing about Daniel and all of the other potential suspects. So where does this leave us today, 23 years later? Well, the ring that was found at the scene of the crime was tested and it was determined that it did in fact contain a viable DNA sample. When this sample was run through CODIS, though it didn't reveal any matches. To top this off, DNA was found on Denise's clothing as well. Unfortunately, this sample wasn't nearly as well preserved and all it proved was that the contributor was a male, but police had already assumed this. But here's the kicker, with genetic genealogy being more promising now than ever before, it's entirely possible that investigators could use this method to narrow down the owner of this gold ring. So it's very likely that this ring may reveal Denise's killer, hence the title of this video. But unfortunately for now, detectives have not been able to test the ring. I'm not sure if the ring simply doesn't contain enough DNA for testing or if they just haven't gotten around to it yet, but police are certainly hopeful that this ring holds the key to solving this case. We don't know if police were able to compare the DNA from the ring to the DNA on Denise's clothes and confirm that they belong to the same person, but we do know that, as mentioned, the sample found on the ring was considered viable. But I'd be lying if I pretended to know everything that would be required to submit this sample for genetic genealogy. So more than 23 years later, the case remains unsolved. But investigators and locals are very hopeful that this case will be brought to a close sooner rather than later. In the meantime, officers are asking that if you recognize this ring and you know someone who may have worn a similar one to it back in the year 2000, to call Detective Kevin Kissel at 810-742-2542. I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty tired of getting robo calls and having to worry about my personal data getting leaked to internet scammers or just annoying salesmen. I believe I have the right to my own personal data and I'm sure you do too. This is where DeleteMe comes in. DeleteMe is an all-in-one, hands-free way to remove your personal data from the internet with the simple push of a button. DeleteMe's proprietary system will scour the darkest corners of the web and remove information about you, such as your name, age, address, email, phone number, photos, social media links, almost literally everything. 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If you wanna help support the channel, the best way you can do that is by leaving a comment below, any comment at all. If you'd like to help out financially, you can click that blue join button below the video. Also, if you know of any other cases you'd like to see me cover in the future, just let me know in the comments below. I'm always looking for new cases to research. But with that, I thank you guys for watching. My name is Ty Nottz and I'll catch you guys in the next video.