It is a possible break in a murder investigation nearly 40-years-old.
Family members say they're hopeful a new search for DNA evidence could solve a decades old mystery: who killed Christie Mullins?
Almost 40 years after Christie was murdered, her sister Kim received a shocking phone call from a Columbus police cold case detective. "I just couldn't believe it,” she recalls.
Kim says detectives told her they found items in Christie's cold case file that could be tested for DNA. She was filled with hope, but terrified of disappointment.
In the summer of 1975, Christie Mulllins was found tied up and beaten to death in the woods behind Graceland Shopping Center. Police charged Jack Carmen, who was mentally challenged, with murder.
He was tried and acquitted.
In 2014, Pam Brown told 10TV her uncle, Henry Newell - the man who found Christie's body - told her he was the killer.
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation began using an improved DNA testing process called “GlobalFiler,” which works better on old, degraded DNA.
Kim says there are no guarantees and the test could yield nothing. Still, she says, at least they're trying.
“That was one of the things I promised my dad on his death bed; that I would keep trying.”
If the GlobalFile testing successfully extracts DNA, it could prove, once and for all, whether Carmen or Newell had anything to do with Christie’s murder, or whether police are looking for a different suspect all together.