Christy Mirack: Dateline: Facing The Music - A detailed investigation overview of the Christy Mirack murder, explored

The 2019 Dateline episode titled, Facing The Music, covered the horrific events surrounding the death of a 25-year-old Elementary School teacher, Christy Mirack.

It was reported that Mirack was brutally killed and was also s*xually assaulted. However, it remained a cold case until two decades later, when new and modern DNA technology helped in catching the culprit.

As per IMDb, the synopsis of the Dateline episode reads as:

"Christy Mirack, a teacher is murdered in 1992, and her friends fear that the killer won't be caught. It took 27 years to put Raymond 'DJ Freez' Rowe behind bars."

More than two decades after Mirack’s death, with the help of modern DNA tracing technology, a man named Raymond Rowe was finally found guilty due to his DNA being present at the location.

Here’s a detailed investigation overview of the Christy Mirack murder case, which was shown on Dateline.

Dateline: Facing The Music - A detailed investigation overview of the Christy Mirack murder, explored

Dateline: Facing The Music | Image via NBC

As depicted on Dateline, on December 21, 1992, Christy was found dead at her home by the principal of Lancaster County Elementary School, Henry Goodman. After noticing that she did not come to school, he went to check on her at her home and found her body, lying lifeless.

1) Goodman called the police

According to Dateline, investigators found that Mirack was about to leave for work, as she was wearing her coat and gloves when she was violently attacked by the perpetrator. Furthermore, a wooden cutting board was also found near her body.

In addition, two of Mirack’s neighbors also told the investigators that they had heard a scream around 7-7:30 a.m.

2) Autopsy revealed the brutal murder of the teacher

An autopsy performed on Mirack’s body later revealed the terrifying circumstances of her death. The report revealed that she was strangled, which ultimately became the reason for her death. She also had numerous injuries and was subjected to blunt force trauma in many parts of her body, including her face and neck.

In addition, it was also revealed that Mirack was s*xually assaulted.

3) Suspicions around Christy’s personal life

According to Dateline, the first thing the police looked into was the teacher’s personal life and discovered that she was seeing a man named Dagger. 20 years older than her, the man came into suspicion of her friends and even the police, as her friends informed that she told them that the duo had broken up just two days before her death.

However, police later found out that Dagger was in Virginia when Christy died, and his DNA sample also did not match the DNA found on Christy, proving that he was not the one who killed her.

4) Modern DNA technology helped in the investigation

After investigating everyone around Christy, even Principal Goodman, the police couldn’t find any link to who could have ended her life so brutally. However, after nearly 24 years, in 2016, Lancaster County Detectives decided to take the help of Parabon NanoLabs to generate a genetic phenotype using the DNA sample found at the murder location and on Christy’s body.

Later, with the help of a public genealogy database, they discovered the names of distant relatives of the suspect. This helped them in finding Raymond Rowe, who had the strongest match to the DNA found on Christy.

5) Detectives gathered evidence to probe Rowe’s DNA

After following Rowe around, the investigators collected chewing gum from the Smoketown Elementary event and some discarded water bottles that Rowe had used to test his DNA.

His DNA was the perfect match, resulting in his arrest in 2018, 27 years after the crime had been committed.

6) Raymond Rowe pleads guilty

Without explaining his motives, Rowe pleaded guilty to killing Mirack in 2019 and was given a life sentence without a chance of parole. However, in 2021, he revealed that he lied when he said he killed Christy.

He now awaits a new trial while serving his prison sentence in the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution.