In the pre-dawn hours of a cold Saturday, February 21, 1987, the quiet of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, was shattered by a brutal crime that would remain a haunting mystery for decades. Vicki Lucille Heath, a forty-one-year-old female, was working the overnight shift at the Super 8 Motel located just off Interstate 65. Recently engaged and looking forward to a new chapter in her life, she was earning extra money to support her future with her fiancé.
The night had been uneventful, with the motel about half full. However, sometime during her shift, she encountered a predator who would savagely end her life.
The following morning, Vicki's body was discovered in a gruesome scene behind a dumpster in the motel's back lot. She had been robbed, brutally beaten, sexually assaulted, and shot twice in the head with a. 38 caliber handgun. The initial investigation by the Elizabethtown Police Department yielded few clues. Footprints were found at the scene, but a light dusting of snow that had fallen overnight quickly melted, preventing clear impressions of either the footprints or any tire tracks. With no substantial leads or suspects, the case eventually went cold, leaving Vicki's family and the community with no answers. For years, detectives pursued various theories, but the trail of the killer seemed to vanish into the night.
Years turned into decades, but investigators did not give up hope. A crucial breakthrough came in 2010 when DNA evidence collected from the crime scene was entered into the Combined DNA Index System. The sample matched DNA from the scenes of other violent crimes along the I-65 corridor, linking Vicki's murder to a series of attacks on female motel clerks in Indiana. This unknown assailant became known as the 'I-65 Serial Killer' or the 'Days Inn Killer.' The connected cases included the 1989 murders of two other motel clerks and the assault of another in 1990 who survived and was able to provide a description of her attacker. She described a white male, approximately six feet to six feet two inches tall, with grayish-brown hair and distinct green eyes, one of which was a lazy eye.
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place in 2022. Through the use of investigative genealogy, law enforcement was able to identify the I-65 Serial Killer. The man responsible for the reign of terror along the interstate, and for the murder of Vicki Lucille Heath, was Harry Edward Greenwell. Greenwell had an extensive and violent criminal history and had died in 2013. The DNA analysis concluded with a probability of over 99 percent that Greenwell was the perpetrator. Though he would never face justice in a courtroom for his horrific crimes, the identification of her killer finally brought a measure of closure to Vicki's family after more than thirty years of uncertainty and pain.
