Lego Fingerprints Solve Lucille Johnson
In 1991, someone strangled and beat 78-year-old grandmother Lucille Johnson to death in her Salt Lake City home, leaving investigators with a brutal crime scene, some missing jewelry, and a scattering of Lego bricks in the entryway and driveway. The case went cold for more than two decades, until detectives reopened it and tested material from under Johnson's fingernails, which matched the DNA of Arizona inmate John Sansing, already in prison for another murder.
When they reexamined the Lego pieces, they found fingerprints that matched Sansing's young son, suggesting he had brought the child with him to the crime scene, possibly as a ruse to gain entry. In 2014, armed with the new DNA and fingerprint evidence, Utah authorities charged Sansing with capital murder in Johnson's death, finally breaking the 23-year-old cold case.