MrBallen

Within the hour, Ingram and his partner were standing in Laverne's garage with Laverne staring into the open trunk of her car.

Laverne had told Ingram that she kept her car and really her whole life very, very clean, like her apartment's clean, everything's clean all the time.

And when she went into her car that day, she noticed there was a little swatch of denim sitting in the trunk.

And she knew that she had not put it there.

And considering she was sort of on high alert about John and about his connection to this murder, it just seemed like something worth flagging to police.

And for Ingram and his partner, as they're staring into the trunk at this little swatch of denim that looks very much like the swatch of denim they were secretly looking for,

They had not publicly revealed that the killer had taken a little swatch of denim from Tanya's jeans.

That was private.

They're looking at this thinking, oh my goodness, like this is the break we needed.

Clearly, that's the denim from Tanya's jeans.

And so Laverne was right to call this in.

This is potentially huge.

Now, obviously Ingram knew that they would still have to get this denim tested to make sure it really was Tanya's.

I mean, it's entirely possible that it was actually Laverne's or John's or was unrelated, but circumstantially, this felt like hitting the jackpot.

And so Ingram watched as his partner picked up the swatch, put it into an evidence bag, and then they left and said they would have it tested and they would be in touch.

The following morning, Ingram was at his desk reviewing all the evidence that they had so far.

And by this point, they had a lot of evidence.

The previous night after finding the denim, they had brought John in for a polygraph test, and he had completely failed it.

The test administrator had even noted that in his opinion, John definitely knew what had happened to Tanya.

So now, realistically, Ingram was just sort of waiting on confirmation that that fabric was a match.