Erin Moriarty and "48 Hours" take viewers deep inside the investigation into a hard-to-close murder case, and those investigators ask for help from the audience in “Solve This Case: Who Killed Kay Wenal?” to be broadcast Saturday at 10 p.m. on CBS 6.
It’s a case that has perplexed local police and private investigators since Kay Wenal, a well-liked, former model was found brutally murdered inside the Gwinnett County, Ga., home she shared with her real-estate millionaire husband in May 2008.
“People who think they can get away with murder sigh a big sigh of relief when years go by,” former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole tells Moriarty. “But this program is going to make them very nervous.”
“Solve this Case: Who Killed Kay Wenal?” is the latest in a franchise from 48 HOURS that focuses on unsolved murder cases. The series goes in-depth into these cases using original reporting to expose critical evidence to a nationwide audience on television, online and on social media platforms.
“I’m talking to you because I want to find out who murdered my sister,” Wenal’s sister Pam Sleeper tells Moriarty.
The murder of Kay Wenal has been difficult to solve because the only blood found at the horrific scene belonged to the victim.
There were no fingerprints or footprints, no evidence of a break-in and the killer took the weapon with him, police and investigators say. Her husband, Hal Wenal, had a solid alibi, and Kay didn’t seem to have any enemies.
But police do have some clues. Three months after the murder, someone sent an expletive-filled cut-and-paste note about the murder to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Police also have a sketch of an unknown man seen by a neighbor the day before and the day of the murder.
Can any of that evidence lead to the killer, or will someone watching know the man in the sketch? Moriarty talks with the current detectives assigned to the case, as well as a trio of investigators hired by Hal Wenal shortly after his wife’s murder, about why this one is so challenging and what could solve the case.
“We need that lucky break,” says investigator John Insogna.
