Michelle Mitchell

Do you know who murdered Michelle Mitchell in 1976?
In the winter of 1976, Michelle Mitchell was a 19-year-old Caucasian nursing student at the University of Nevada, Reno, with a life full of promise ahead of her. Remembered as a bright and dedicated young woman, her future was abruptly and brutally stolen on the evening of February 24, 1976, in an act of violence that would take decades to fully resolve and would unravel a profound miscarriage of justice.

That Tuesday evening, Michelle was on her way to bring orange juice to her father when her Volkswagen Beetle broke down near the university campus, at the intersection of 9th Street and Evans Avenue. She walked to a nearby phone booth and called her mother for help. Witnesses later reported seeing someone help push her car into a parking lot across from the UNR agricultural building. When her mother arrived just minutes after the call, Michelle was gone. A frantic search ended in the worst possible way only a few hours later. Michelle’s body was discovered in the garage of a residence on East 9th Street, not far from where her car was parked. Her hands had been bound behind her back, and her throat had been slashed.

The Reno Police Department launched an investigation into the shocking murder, which generated immense public pressure and media coverage. Despite witness reports of a man seen fleeing the area around the time of the crime, the case went cold. The only significant physical evidence recovered was a cigarette butt found near Michelle’s body, which was carefully preserved. For three years, there were no arrests and no new leads, leaving the community on edge and Michelle’s family without answers.

In 1979, the case took a dramatic and misleading turn. Authorities in Shreveport, Louisiana, contacted Reno police to report that a 26-year-old woman named Cathy Woods, a patient at a psychiatric hospital, had told a counselor she had killed a girl named Michelle in Reno. Woods had a long history of severe mental illness, including schizophrenia, and was floridly psychotic at the time. Despite her obvious mental state and the vagueness of her statements, police interrogated her. Based almost entirely on a confession that investigators allegedly fed her details of, Woods was charged with Michelle's murder. Prosecutors built a theory that Woods, a lesbian, had killed Michelle after her sexual advances were rejected.

Cathy Woods was convicted of first-degree murder in 1980 and again in a 1985 retrial, both times sentenced to life in prison without parole. She would spend the next 35 years incarcerated for a crime she did not commit, becoming the longest-wrongfully incarcerated woman in United States history. Throughout her imprisonment, doubts about her guilt persisted, as there was no physical evidence linking her to the scene. In 2013, with the help of another inmate, Woods sought DNA testing on the evidence from the crime scene.

The results of the DNA analysis were a bombshell. The tests not only excluded Cathy Woods but also revealed a male DNA profile on the cigarette butt found next to Michelle’s body in 1976. In July 2014, that DNA profile was matched in the FBI's national database to Rodney Halbower, a man with a violent criminal past. At the time of Michelle’s murder, Halbower was out on bond for the rape of a Reno blackjack dealer. He was later convicted of that crime and, after a 1986 prison escape and another violent attack in Oregon, was serving a life sentence there.

This definitive DNA evidence led to Cathy Woods' conviction being vacated in September 2014, and all charges against her were formally dismissed in March 2015. She later received millions in settlements from the state of Nevada, Washoe County, and the cities of Reno and Shreveport for her wrongful conviction. The DNA also connected Halbower to the "Gypsy Hill" murders, a series of killings of young women in San Mateo County, California, that occurred during the same period. In 2018, Halbower was convicted for the murders of two of the California victims, Veronica Cascio and Paula Baxter, and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. Though the DNA evidence provided a clear answer as to who killed Michelle Mitchell, Halbower died in prison before he could be formally tried for her murder. The case is now considered solved, having finally brought the truth to light after decades of unanswered questions and tragic injustice.