On a summer night in 1999, two 17-year-old best
friends disappeared after stopping at a convenience store to ask for
directions. By the following morning, their car had been discovered beside a
quiet Alabama road. Their purses were still inside, their money had not been
taken, and there was little to explain why they had seemingly vanished.
Then an officer asked a question that changed the
investigation: Had anyone checked the trunk?
Inside were the bodies of JB Beasley and Tracy
Hollet, two teenagers who had been looking forward to celebrating a birthday
and beginning their senior year of high school. Both had been shot. What should
have been a joyful night had become a double
homicide investigation that would haunt their families and
challenge investigators for decades.
The case eventually produced a DNA profile, but
identifying the person responsible proved far more difficult than recovering
the evidence. Investigators questioned people, pursued leads and waited for
technology to catch up with a mystery that seemed impossible to solve.
Almost 24 years after the killings, a modern DNA testing breakthrough
helped police identify a man who had not initially been on their radar: Collie
McCrainy, a local truck driver and preacher.
His arrest brought long-awaited answers, but the
trial raised another question that jurors had to confront. Was his explanation
for the DNA credible, or did the forensic evidence and the timeline tell a
different story?
A Birthday Celebration That Never
Happened
Saturday, July 31, 1999, was supposed to be a special
night for JB Beasley. She was celebrating her 17th birthday, and her best
friend, Tracy Hollet, was by her side. Both girls were preparing to enter their
senior year, a time when school, friendships and plans for the future filled
their lives.
They set out from Dothan, Alabama, in JB's black
Mazda, intending to attend a field party being held outside town in her honor.
Field parties were informal gatherings, often
organized in open fields away from residential neighborhoods. Teenagers would
meet, listen to music and socialize, sometimes using pickup trucks and their
headlights to illuminate the gathering. There was no formal venue or carefully
arranged schedule.
But the girls encountered a problem on the way: they
became lost.
In 1999, getting directions was not as simple as
entering an address into a smartphone. Drivers often had to stop at a gas
station, find a pay phone or ask someone familiar with the area for help. As JB
and Tracy continued searching for the right route, they traveled into Ozark,
more than 20 miles from Dothan.
They eventually pulled into a convenience store known
as the Big Little Store.
It would become one of the most important locations
in the entire investigation.
The Last Call to Tracy's Mother
At approximately 11:30 p.m., the girls stopped at the
store and asked for directions. Tracy used a pay phone to call her mother.
The conversation was reassuring. Tracy explained that
they had been lost but were all right. They had obtained directions and planned
to skip the party and head home instead.
There was no apparent indication of danger in the
call. The girls seemed to have solved an ordinary problem during an ordinary
night out.
They left the store, and witnesses later placed them
in the area. Neither teenager would make it home.
For their families, the uncertainty that followed was
devastating. At first, the situation might have appeared to be a case of two
teenagers running late. But as the hours passed, the absence of any word became
increasingly alarming.
Early the following morning, police officers in Ozark
found JB's Mazda on the shoulder of Herring Avenue, a quiet road near a wooded
area. The vehicle was less than a mile from the convenience store where the
girls had last been seen.
The car was unlocked, and the driver's-side window
was down. Both girls' purses remained inside, and the cash had not been taken.
The car keys appeared to be missing.
There was no immediate explanation for why the
vehicle had been abandoned or where its occupants had gone.
Then investigators noticed something that would
become a defining detail of the case.
The trunk had not been opened.
The Discovery That Turned a
Missing-Person Case Into a Murder Investigation
When officers from Dothan arrived to assist, they
examined the Mazda more closely. Several details appeared unusual.
The rearview mirror had been broken off and was lying
on the floorboard. Mud was visible inside the front of the car, while dirt and
dust covered parts of the exterior. Investigators also noticed what appeared to
be a smudged handprint on the rear driver's-side door and a dark substance on
the rear bumper.
One officer asked whether anyone had checked the
trunk.
The Ozark officers explained that they had not opened
it because they did not have the keys. The Dothan officer pointed out that the
vehicle had an interior trunk-release lever and used it to open the
compartment.
Inside were JB and Tracy.
Both teenagers had been shot in the head.
The discovery immediately transformed the
investigation into a double
murder case. Police were no longer searching for two missing
girls. They were trying to establish where the killings had occurred, who had
carried them out and what had happened between the girls' final phone call and
the discovery of their bodies.
Their clothing provided investigators with additional
questions. Briars clung to Tracy's pants, and her new shoes were caked with
mud. JB's jeans were also heavily soiled around the lower legs, with dirt
visible on the fabric.
These details suggested that the girls might have
been in a muddy or overgrown location before their bodies were placed in the
trunk. Investigators needed to determine whether the car was the scene of the
attack or whether the teenagers had been taken somewhere else.
Forensic examination recovered bullets and shell
casings. Subsequent testing established that both girls had been shot with the
same firearm.
But the weapon itself would remain an unresolved part
of the case.
The DNA Evidence That Could Not
Identify a Suspect
Among the most significant findings was biological
evidence recovered from JB's body and clothing. Investigators found semen,
allowing forensic specialists to develop a DNA profile associated with the biological
material.
In a murder investigation, DNA can help establish an
association between a person and evidence collected from a crime scene.
However, obtaining a profile is only one part of the process. Investigators
must still identify whose DNA it is and determine what the evidence means in
the wider context of the case.
That second step proved extraordinarily difficult.
The DNA was searched against available databases, but
no match was found. Investigators also compared it with samples obtained from
people they were considering as possible suspects. Those efforts did not
identify the person whose DNA had been recovered.
The profile became a crucial piece of evidence
without providing the answer police needed.
Years passed. Investigators interviewed people,
followed tips and examined new information as it emerged. Some individuals
claimed to know what had happened, but the case remained unsolved. Whenever
investigators had a sample that could be compared with the evidence, the
results failed to deliver the breakthrough they were seeking.
For JB and Tracy's families, the absence of an arrest
meant living with questions that had no satisfactory answers. Who had
encountered the girls after they left the store? Why had they been killed? And
how could someone responsible for such a crime remain unidentified?
By 2018, nearly two decades had passed since the
murders.
Yet the evidence had not disappeared. The DNA profile
remained available, waiting for an investigative method capable of producing a
new lead.
How Genetic Genealogy Changed the
Investigation
A major development in another American cold case
offered investigators a possible way forward.
In 2018, authorities identified the Golden State Killer
using investigative genetic genealogy, a technique that combines genetic
information with traditional family-history research. The case demonstrated how
DNA could sometimes identify an unknown suspect through biological relatives
rather than through a direct match in a conventional law-enforcement database.
The approach offered a new possibility for the
Beasley and Hollet investigation.
Instead of relying exclusively on a direct database
match, investigators could look for genetic relatives of the unknown individual
and trace family relationships. Researchers could then use genealogical records
and other information to narrow the possibilities.
It was a painstaking process. Genetic relatives might
share only a distant connection to the person being investigated. A match did
not automatically identify a suspect, and family trees could contain many
potential candidates.
But it could provide a path where conventional
searches had reached a dead end.
Ozark's police chief considered whether this approach
could help solve the long-running case. Investigators turned to Parabon NanoLabs,
a company known for its work in forensic genetic genealogy.
The DNA evidence was used to develop a profile for
genealogical research, and the investigation proceeded through genetic
comparisons and family-tree analysis, including work involving GEDmatch.
The goal was not simply to find a surname. It was to
establish a credible connection between the unknown DNA profile and a
particular individual, then test that lead using conventional investigative
methods.
Gradually, the research narrowed the field.
One surname drew the chief's attention: McCrainy.
He recognized it because he knew a local man named
Collie McCrainy. The two had grown up in the area, had known one another for
years and were on friendly terms.
The name was no longer just a branch on a family
tree. It was connected to someone investigators could approach directly.
The Local Preacher Who Was Not on
the Original Suspect List
Collie McCrainy did not fit the image many people
might have imagined for a suspect in a notorious double murder.
He was 45 years old when the investigation focused on
him. He had worked as a truck driver and was known in the community as a
preacher and bishop. He had no criminal record that had brought him to
investigators' attention in connection with the killings.
His name had not been a central part of the original
investigation in 1999.
That was precisely what made the new lead so
significant. Investigators had spent years examining people and possibilities
without identifying the person whose DNA was in the evidence. Now, a
combination of modern genetic analysis and traditional genealogy had pointed
them toward someone they could test.
The police chief contacted McCrainy and asked him to
provide a DNA sample.
McCrainy agreed. Investigators collected a cheek swab
and submitted it for comparison with the profile preserved from the 1999 investigation.
The result was decisive for the direction of the
case: McCrainy's DNA
matched the forensic evidence.
The match provided investigators with the
identification they had sought for almost 20 years. But DNA evidence alone
would not explain every detail of the crime. Detectives still had to
investigate McCrainy's movements, evaluate the timeline and determine whether
other evidence supported a criminal charge.
They also needed to understand his connection to the
place where JB and Tracy had last been seen.
A Geography That Investigators
Could No Longer Ignore
When investigators examined McCrainy's circumstances
in 1999, the locations became especially relevant.
He had recently completed his service in the U.S.
Navy and returned to Ozark, where he was working as a truck driver.
The Big Little Store, where JB and Tracy had stopped
for directions and where Tracy had called her mother, was approximately half a
mile from McCrainy's home. Herring Avenue, where police found the Mazda with
the girls' bodies inside, was also less than a mile away.
Proximity by itself does not establish guilt. A
person can live near a crime scene without having committed a crime. In this
investigation, however, the geographical details formed part of a broader
picture that included the DNA match and the developing timeline.
The combination gave investigators grounds to pursue
the case further.
In March 2019, nearly 20 years after JB Beasley and
Tracy Hollet were killed, McCrainy was arrested.
The arrest was a major milestone for the families and
investigators who had waited years for a suspect to be identified. Yet the case
still had to be tested in court, where the prosecution would need to prove its
allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.
And McCrainy had an explanation for why his DNA had
been found.
The Defendant's Story Changed at
Trial
During his initial interactions with investigators,
McCrainy said he did not know JB or Tracy.
At his 2023 trial, however, he offered a different
account. Taking the witness stand in his own defense, he testified that he had
met JB several weeks to a month before the murders at a shopping mall in
Dothan.
According to his testimony, he had been leaving a
Radio Shack store when the two began talking. Their conversation lasted about
15 minutes, he said, and they discussed the possibility of meeting again.
McCrainy told jurors that he did not have a home
telephone and was already dating someone. He said he gave JB his mother's
landline number rather than a number that his girlfriend might answer.
He further testified that he and JB had loosely
arranged to meet at the Big Little Store at around 10 p.m. on July 31.
According to his account, he waited at the store but
left when JB did not appear. Later, he said, car trouble brought him back to
the same location. He then encountered JB and Tracy, who had become lost while
trying to reach the field party.
McCrainy claimed he offered to help the teenagers
find a shortcut back to the highway. He testified that they eventually stopped
near the location where his semi-truck was parked.
In his version of events, Tracy stayed behind while
he and JB entered the truck's sleeper cab and had consensual sex. Afterward, he
said, the girls drove him back to Ozark and dropped him off at approximately
12:30 a.m.
He maintained that both teenagers were alive when he
last saw them and that he had no involvement in their deaths.
His testimony supplied an explanation for the DNA
evidence, but it also introduced serious questions about why he had initially
denied knowing either girl.
The jury was required to consider his account
alongside the forensic findings, the testimony of other witnesses and the
timeline established during the investigation.
His Wife's Testimony Added Another
Piece to the Timeline
McCrainy's wife, who had been his girlfriend in 1999,
also testified at trial.
She told the court that she returned home at
approximately 8 p.m. on the night of July 31. McCrainy arrived sometime
afterward, then left again at around 10 p.m. She said he did not return until
approximately 12:45 a.m.
When he came home, according to her testimony, he
told her that his car had broken down at the Big Little Store. She said she
went back to the store with him to retrieve it.
Her account placed McCrainy at the same convenience
store connected to the girls' final known movements. It also supplied a
timeline that jurors could compare with his testimony and the other evidence.
Tracy had called her mother at approximately 11:30
p.m. to explain that the girls were heading home. The teenagers were then seen
leaving the store area. McCrainy's wife testified that he did not return home
until around 12:45 a.m., and the Mazda was found the following morning less
than a mile from the store.
Prosecutors argued that the evidence, considered
together, supported their case against McCrainy. They asked jurors to evaluate
his changing account alongside the DNA match and the circumstances surrounding
the girls' disappearance.
The defense, however, challenged the prosecution's
interpretation of the evidence.
What the DNA Could Prove—and What
the Jury Had to Decide
The case had powerful forensic evidence, but it was
not without unanswered questions.
Investigators never recovered the murder weapon. No
eyewitness testified to seeing McCrainy shoot JB or Tracy. The defense also
emphasized that DNA evidence does not, by itself, explain precisely when or how
biological material came to be present.
Those points formed part of the dispute jurors had to
assess.
The prosecution's case did not rest on a DNA result
in isolation. Jurors heard testimony about the defendant's connection to JB,
his account of their encounter, his earlier denial that he knew the girls, the
location of the convenience store and the timeline surrounding the killings.
The defense offered an alternative explanation for
the DNA and challenged the inferences prosecutors drew from the surrounding
circumstances.
Ultimately, the jury had to determine which account
was supported by the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
The question was especially consequential because the
charges involved two teenagers who had disappeared during what should have been
an ordinary birthday celebration. Their families had waited almost 24 years for
the case to reach a courtroom.
The 2023 Verdict
In April 2023, the jury found Collie McCrainy guilty
on all four counts of capital murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The verdict brought a legal conclusion to a case that
had remained unresolved for nearly a quarter of a century. For investigators,
it demonstrated how evidence preserved from an older crime could become useful
when new technology offered a different route to identification.
For the families of JB Beasley and Tracy Hollet, the
outcome marked the end of a long wait for a courtroom decision, although no
verdict could restore the lives lost that night.
The case also illustrated an important distinction in
modern forensic investigations: genetic genealogy can help identify a person
who may be connected to a crime, but the resulting lead must still be tested
against other evidence. Family relationships can point investigators in a
direction; they do not replace the investigative work needed to establish what
happened.
In this case, a DNA profile that had remained
unidentified for years eventually led police to a local man whose name had not
featured prominently in the original investigation. The prosecution then
presented the genetic evidence alongside testimony and other circumstances for
jurors to evaluate.
Why the Case Matters for Cold-Case
Investigations
The murders of JB Beasley and Tracy Hollet remain a
striking example of how a cold
case investigation can change when forensic technology
develops.
In 1999, investigators had evidence that could
potentially identify a person but lacked a match that gave them a name.
Traditional database searches and comparisons with people under investigation
did not solve the problem.
Nearly two decades later, forensic genetic genealogy
offered a different strategy. Rather than depending entirely on a direct
identification, investigators could use genetic relationships to build family
connections and narrow the search.
The method is not a shortcut that guarantees a
solution. It requires suitable DNA evidence, careful analysis, access to
relevant genealogical information and follow-up investigation. Potential
relatives must be interpreted correctly, and any suspect identified through the
process must be evaluated using additional evidence.
Nevertheless, the technique has expanded the
possibilities for investigators working on unsolved crimes, particularly cases
in which biological evidence was collected long before today's analytical tools
existed.
The case also highlights the importance of preserving
evidence. Even when a crime remains unsolved for years, properly stored
biological material may retain investigative value as scientific methods
improve.
Two Lives Remembered Beyond the
Investigation
It is easy for a long-running murder case to become
defined by the evidence, the suspect and the eventual verdict. But at the
center of the Beasley and Hollet investigation were two 17-year-old girls whose
lives were cut short.
JB had been celebrating her birthday. Tracy was her
best friend. They were preparing to begin their senior year and had set out for
an evening with friends. Their final known call was a reassuring conversation
with Tracy's mother, explaining that they had been lost and were now heading
home.
That ordinary detail makes the events that followed
particularly difficult to comprehend.
Their car was found close to the place where they had
asked for help, with their belongings still inside. For years, the people who
loved them had to live with the absence of a clear explanation.
The eventual conviction answered the central legal
question of who was held responsible for their deaths. It also showed how
patient investigative work and advances in DNA analysis could bring a
decades-old case back into focus.
But the deeper lesson is not simply that technology
solved a mystery. It is that evidence can remain meaningful long after an
investigation appears to have stalled—and that the pursuit of answers may
continue long after the headlines fade.
For nearly 24 years, the murders of JB Beasley and
Tracy Hollet remained unresolved. A DNA profile, new genealogical methods and a
renewed investigation eventually led to an arrest and conviction.
What began as a birthday trip that ended in tragedy became a landmark example of DNA cold-case investigation—and a reminder that even when the truth takes decades to emerge, the evidence may still be waiting to tell its story.
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