On a summer night in 1999, two best friends set out for
a birthday celebration. They were both 17, had their final year of high school
ahead of them, and expected to spend the evening with friends. Instead, they
disappeared after stopping at a convenience store to ask for directions.
By sunrise, their car had been discovered on a quiet
Alabama road. Their purses were still inside. Their money had not been taken.
The vehicle appeared abandoned, but investigators had overlooked one crucial
place.
The trunk.
When officers finally opened it, they found the
bodies of JB Beasley
and Tracy Hollet, both killed by gunfire. What followed was a
lengthy double-murder
investigation that would frustrate detectives for almost two
decades.
The case eventually produced a breakthrough through DNA evidence and investigative
genetic genealogy. The person identified through that work was
not an obvious criminal suspect. He was a local man known in the community as a
truck driver and preacher.
His arrest in 2019 brought a long-awaited
development. But his explanation at trial raised another question: could the
jury believe his account of the final hours of two teenagers whose families had
waited years for answers?
A birthday celebration that never
happened
Saturday, July 31, 1999, was supposed to be a happy
occasion for JB Beasley. She was celebrating her 17th birthday, and her best
friend, Tracy Hollet, was spending the evening with her.
Both girls lived in the Dothan, Alabama, area and
were preparing to begin their senior year of high school. Their plans included
attending a field party being held outside town.
JB drove her black Mazda, with Tracy alongside her.
At some point, however, the teenagers became lost. In 1999, finding an
unfamiliar destination was not as simple as following a navigation app. Drivers
often relied on road signs, pay phones, gas stations and directions from
strangers.
The girls eventually travelled to Ozark, more than 20
miles from Dothan.
At approximately 11:30 p.m., they stopped at a
convenience store known as the Big Little Store. They asked for directions,
hoping to find their way back.
Tracy also used a pay phone to contact her mother.
She explained that they had become lost but were all right. They had received
directions, she said, and had decided to skip the party and head home instead.
It was the last known phone conversation involving
either girl.
Nothing in that call suggested that the teenagers
understood they were in danger. They had simply changed their plans and were
preparing to return home.
But they never arrived.
The abandoned Mazda that concealed
a terrible discovery
Early the following morning, police officers in Ozark
noticed JB's black Mazda parked along Herring Avenue, beside a wooded area.
The location 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 open. Inside, investigators found the girls' purses and cash. Their
personal belongings had not been taken, and the vehicle's keys were missing.
At first, officers did not open the trunk.
That decision would later become one of the most
disturbing details of the investigation. When officers from Dothan arrived to
assist, they began examining the vehicle more closely and noticed several
details that appeared inconsistent with an ordinary abandonment.
The rearview mirror had been broken off and was lying
on the floor. Mud was visible inside the vehicle, while dirt and dust covered
parts of its 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 of the Dothan officers asked whether anyone had
checked the trunk.
The answer was no. The officers had believed they
needed the keys to open it. But the Dothan officer pointed out that the trunk
could be released from inside the vehicle.
He activated the release.
Inside were JB and Tracy.
Both teenagers had been shot in the head. The
discovery transformed what might initially have appeared to be an abandoned-car
investigation into a double
homicide case.
The condition of their clothing also raised
questions. Briars were caught on Tracy's trousers, and her new shoes were
heavily muddied. JB's jeans were dirty around the lower legs, with soil visible
both inside and outside the fabric.
Those details suggested that the girls may have been
taken through an outdoor area before their bodies were placed in the trunk.
Investigators began working to establish where the killings had occurred and
how the teenagers had ended up back near the convenience store.
DNA evidence gave investigators a
clue—but not a name
Detectives recovered ballistic evidence, including
bullets and shell casings. Subsequent testing indicated that both girls had
been shot with the same firearm.
But another discovery would become especially
important years later.
Investigators found semen evidence inside JB's body and
on her underwear and bra. Forensic testing produced a male DNA profile that
could potentially identify a person who had sexual contact with her around the
relevant period.
It was a significant development, but it did not
immediately solve the murders.
A DNA profile can provide powerful evidence, yet
investigators still need to establish whose profile it is and how the
biological material came to be present. At that stage, police had no confirmed
identity.
The profile was compared with available records and
samples from people investigators considered relevant to the case. The
comparisons did not produce a match.
The investigation continued. Detectives interviewed
people, followed leads and examined claims from individuals who said they knew
something about the girls' final hours. But the central forensic question
remained unanswered.
The unidentified DNA profile became one of the most
important pieces of evidence in a case that was growing colder with every
passing year.
Nearly two decades passed without
an arrest
The murders remained unsolved through the 2000s and
much of the following decade.
For the families of JB and Tracy, the passage of time
did not bring an explanation. Their daughters had left home for an ordinary
teenage celebration, yet the circumstances surrounding their deaths remained
unresolved.
For investigators, the case presented a difficult
problem. They had a DNA profile, but conventional database comparisons had not
identified the person responsible.
Then a high-profile investigation in California
demonstrated a new way of approaching unidentified DNA.
In 2018, investigators identified the Golden State Killer
using investigative genetic genealogy. Rather than relying exclusively on a
direct match in a criminal DNA database, investigators used genetic information
to identify possible relatives and then traced family connections.
The technique attracted national attention and showed
how genetic genealogy could help investigators revisit old cases.
The Ozark investigation's leadership began
considering whether a similar approach could help identify the unknown man
whose DNA had been preserved in the Beasley-Hollet case.
The evidence was sent to Parabon NanoLabs, a company
involved in forensic genetic genealogy. A genetic profile was developed and
uploaded to GEDmatch, a genealogy database used in certain investigations.
The process involved examining genetic connections,
identifying possible relatives and narrowing the search through family trees.
It was not an instant identification. Investigators had to work through
relationships and compare the emerging family connections with information
about people who had lived in the relevant area.
Eventually, the work pointed toward a family name
that caught the attention of the Ozark police chief.
It was McCrainy.
A local preacher became the focus
of the investigation
The surname led investigators to Collie McCrainy, a
man the police chief already knew.
McCrainy was 45 years old in 2019. He had worked as a
truck driver and was known locally as a preacher and bishop. He did not have
the criminal history that might ordinarily have drawn attention in a major
homicide investigation.
He had not been a central suspect in 1999, and
investigators had not previously focused on him as a possible source of the DNA
evidence.
The connection was unexpected, particularly because
McCrainy was familiar to people in the community.
The police chief contacted him and asked whether he
would voluntarily provide a DNA sample. McCrainy agreed. Investigators
collected a cheek swab and submitted it for comparison with the evidence
preserved from the original investigation.
The result changed the direction of the case.
The DNA comparison identified
McCrainy as a match to the male profile recovered during the investigation.
That result gave detectives a name to pursue. It did
not, by itself, answer every question about the murders, but it provided a
critical forensic link that had eluded investigators for nearly 20 years.
Detectives then examined McCrainy's life and
movements around the time of the killings.
They found that he had been living in Ozark after
completing his service in the U.S. Navy and working as a truck driver. His home
was close to two locations central to the investigation.
The Big Little Store, where JB and Tracy had stopped
and where Tracy had called her mother, was approximately half a mile from his
home. The place where the Mazda was discovered was also less than a mile away.
Those geographical connections added context to the
DNA finding and became part of the investigation that led to his arrest.
The 2019 arrest reopened a case
that had haunted two families
In March 2019, nearly 20 years after the murders,
Collie McCrainy was arrested in connection with the killings of JB Beasley and
Tracy Hollet.
The arrest represented a major breakthrough, but the
legal process was far from over. Prosecutors would have to present evidence in
court, while the defence would have the opportunity to challenge the state's
interpretation of that evidence.
One important issue was McCrainy's explanation for
the DNA.
When investigators initially questioned him, he said
he did not know JB or Tracy. By the time the case reached trial, however, his
account had changed significantly.
At his 2023 trial, McCrainy took the witness stand
and described an encounter with JB that he said had occurred weeks before the
murders.
According to his testimony, he met her at a shopping
mall in Dothan while leaving a Radio Shack. He said they spoke for
approximately 15 minutes.
He also testified that he was dating someone at the
time and did not have a home phone of his own. Rather than give JB a number
that his girlfriend might answer, he said he gave her his mother's landline
number.
McCrainy claimed that he and JB later arranged to
meet at the Big Little Store on the night of July 31, 1999.
His testimony offered a detailed explanation for why
his DNA might have been found on JB. But it also placed him in the story of the
girls' final evening in a way that contradicted his earlier statement that he
did not know her.
His trial testimony offered a
different account of the final hours
McCrainy told the jury that he had gone to the Big
Little Store expecting to meet JB at around 10 p.m. He said she did not arrive,
so he left.
Later, according to his account, he returned to the
store after experiencing car trouble. He then encountered JB and Tracy, who had
become lost while travelling toward the field party.
He testified that he offered to help the girls find a
shortcut back to the highway.
At some point, he said, they stopped near the
location where his semi-truck was parked. He claimed Tracy remained behind
while he and JB went into the truck's sleeper cab, where they had consensual
sex.
Afterward, McCrainy 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.
This was his explanation for the forensic evidence.
But prosecutors had a different interpretation. They
argued that the DNA, the timeline, the surrounding circumstances and the
changes in McCrainy's account pointed toward his responsibility for the
murders.
The jury also heard testimony from a witness whose
account placed McCrainy's movements at the centre of the timeline.
His wife’s testimony added another
important piece to the timeline
McCrainy's wife, who had been dating him in 1999,
testified during the trial.
She told the court that she returned home at
approximately 8 p.m. that night. McCrainy arrived later, she said, but left
again around 10 p.m.
According to her testimony, he did not return until
approximately 12:45 a.m.
She also recalled that when he came home, he told her
his vehicle had broken down at the Big Little Store. She said she went back to
the convenience store with him to retrieve it.
Her account placed McCrainy and his vehicle at the
same location where JB and Tracy had last been seen.
The timing became important to the prosecution's
case. Tracy's phone call to her mother had taken place around 11:30 p.m.
Witnesses had seen the girls leave the store, while McCrainy's wife placed his
return home at approximately 12:45 a.m.
The girls' Mazda was later found less than a mile
from the store, with their bodies hidden in its trunk.
Prosecutors argued that the sequence of events,
considered alongside the DNA evidence, supported their account of what had
happened after the teenagers left the convenience store.
The defence challenged the
evidence
The prosecution's case was substantial, but the
defence also highlighted issues the jury had to consider.
The murder weapon had never been recovered. There was
no eyewitness who testified to seeing McCrainy shoot the girls. The defence
also argued that DNA evidence did not automatically establish the circumstances
in which biological material had been deposited.
That distinction mattered. A forensic match can
identify a person whose DNA is present, but the surrounding evidence must still
be considered when a court determines what happened and whether the accused is
guilty of a crime.
McCrainy's explanation was therefore central to the
trial. Jurors had to assess his testimony alongside the forensic evidence, the
witnesses' accounts, the timeline and the statements he had made during the
investigation.
After years of uncertainty, the case had reached the
point where a jury would decide whether the evidence proved the charges beyond
a reasonable doubt.
The 2023 verdict brought a
long-awaited answer
In April 2023, the jury found Collie McCrainy guilty
on all four counts of capital murder.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
The verdict marked the end of a criminal
investigation that had remained unresolved for almost 24 years. It also
demonstrated how preserved forensic evidence and advances in DNA testing technology
can give investigators new options when traditional investigative methods fail.
For the families of JB Beasley and Tracy Hollet, the
outcome brought a major development after decades of unanswered questions. The
girls had left for a birthday celebration as two 17-year-old friends. Their
lives were cut short, and the people who loved them had spent years waiting for
the truth to emerge.
The case also became an example of how forensic genetic genealogy
can help reopen investigations that once appeared to have reached a dead end. A
DNA profile that had produced no direct database match for years eventually
helped investigators identify a person who had not been an obvious suspect when
the murders occurred.
The most haunting detail remains how ordinary the
beginning of that night seemed. Two teenagers got lost, stopped to ask for
directions and made a phone call home. They were close to finding their way
back.
Instead, their abandoned car became the centre of a
mystery that lasted nearly a quarter of a century.
And the evidence that ultimately changed the investigation had been waiting in storage all along.
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