Linda Slaten case: Murdered Florida woman’s son hung this photo on his bedroom wall, never knowing he was standing in front of his mother’s killer

GAME DELAY: “48 Hours” will air Saturday, December 3 at 10:18/9:18c

September 4, 1981 was the day these males say their childhood ended. Jeff Slaten and his youthful brother, Tim, had been woke up by Lakeland, Florida, cops, and advised their mom had been murdered.  Police hustled the boys exterior, however Tim, nonetheless in his pajamas, caught a glimpse of his mom.  She had been raped and strangled.

“I saw the whole crime scene right then and there as a 12-year-old kid,” Tim Slaten tells CBS News chief investigative and senior nationwide correspondent Jim Axelrod. “You can’t unsee that,” says Axelrod.  Tim, with tears in his eyes, says he “still sees” the picture of his useless mom, and is aware of he at all times will.

To this day, the Slaten brothers really feel grief and guilt, for not listening to something that night time, for not coming to their mother’s rescue.  “I (would have) died  died that night tryin’ to save my mom,” Jeff Slaten says. “But I didn’t hear nothing.  And it’s so hard to live with that.”

“48 Hours” and Axelrod report the story of the brothers’ seek for justice in “The Betrayal of Linda Slaten” airing Saturday, Dec. 3 at 10:18/9:18c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.  

Immediately after the homicide, Jeff and Tim moved in with their grandparents.  For these first horrifying days, your complete household slept in the identical room.  It was their grandfather who not often slept. He was standing guard all night time with a shotgun. 

A number of weeks later, the boys had been again in college, and Tim was again taking part in soccer, his favourite sport.  “Just trying to live life again,” he says.  His teammates and coach, “Coach Joe,” had been at all times supportive, at all times rooting for him.  Coach Joe, 20 on the time, was a younger man Tim had appeared as much as. He typically drove Tim to and from soccer follow — a routine that had began effectively earlier than the homicide.

For years, Tim Slaten proudly hung his workforce soccer photo in his bedroom, taken only one month after the homicide.  The photo was additionally a reminder, he says, of one thing his mother had taught him:  to maintain transferring ahead and never hand over. 

After the homicide, Lakeland investigators had collected a rape equipment and lifted a palm print from Linda Slaten’s bedroom window, the place the killer had entered.  Detectives had questioned a slew of suspects, like Linda’s abusive ex-husband, Frank Slaten.  Even her personal son, Jeff, grew to become an individual of curiosity, telling Axelrod, “Lakeland Police, they was interrogating me all the time.”

But nobody was charged.  Before lengthy, the case went chilly and stayed that means for practically 4 a long time.  Jeff Slaten says, he thought for positive he’d take his final breath with out knowing who murdered his mother.

But exceptional advances in DNA expertise renewed hope, and that fastidiously saved rape equipment revealed an unlikely suspect, Joseph Clinton Mills — Coach Joe.

Now these automotive rides to follow took on new which means.  So did Tim’s workforce soccer photo, which sickens him right now.  Because standing immediately behind Tim is the person he as soon as trusted and admired, Coach Joe.  He would typically ask Tim how the case was going. Was there any news?  Were there any new leads?  Coach Joe was speaking to a 12-year-old boy, attempting to maintain tabs on a homicide investigation by the son of the murdered girl when he knew precisely who did it.

“I’ve been carrying the killer’s picture in my house this whole time and never had a clue,” Jeff says. “He’s a cold-hearted monster, that’s for sure.”