Update on Brianna Denison Case

December 16, 2008

Earlier this year, I reported that Brianna Denison, 19, had been found raped and strangled to death a month after she disappeared from a friend's house in Reno, Nevada (see Snatched in the Dead of Night). Readers will recall that Brianna's body was found in a vacant field on Reno's southeast side in February 2008. Two pairs of panties that did not belong to her were found nearby. Last week Reno police announced that they had arrested a man for the alleged rape and murder of Brianna Denison, a man that investigators are looking at in a number of additional similar unsolved cases in other states.

According to Reno Police Lt. Robert McDonald, an anonymous tipster called in on November 1, 2008 to report that James Michael Biela, 27, had been fingered as a potential suspect in Brianna Denison's rape and murder by Biela's girlfriend and mother of his 4-year-old son. Apparently Biela's girlfriend had found a pair of women's panties that did not belong to her inside his truck's console in mid-September while returning to the Reno area from Washington State, and she had told the tipster about the discovery and her suspicions about the man with whom she'd been living. Biela had apparently departed Reno a short time after Brianna's body had been found.

McDonald, in an interview with ABC News, indicated that detectives did not know who the panties found inside Biela's truck belonged to, but that he fit a general profile that Reno homicide detective Adam Wygnanski and others in the department had put together over the past several months. Because the tipster had told police that Biela's girlfriend had said that Biela had displayed odd behavior and fit the suspect details in Brianna's case, Wygnanski wanted to know more. He called Biela and set up a meeting outdoors in a parking lot because Biela did not want cops coming to his house.

"My suspicion began with that phone call," Wygnanski recently told a reporter with the Reno Gazette-Journal. "I told him we were conducting an investigation, and I needed a few minutes of his time. I didn't tell him what it was about, and he hung up. It was strange he never asked me what the investigation was about. If the police come to your house and leave a card that says they're from the robbery-homicide unit, wouldn't you want to know what it was about?"

Wygnanski said that Biela was nervous, fidgety, and was reluctant to make eye contact during the meeting. He was also sweating. Admittedly, it wasn't much, but it was sufficient to convince the detective that Biela was the man he had been looking for.

"He said he had no involvement and refused to give me a DNA sample," Wygnanski said. "He said he didn't trust it. I told him it was a quick way to eliminate himself (as a suspect) and that we had a lot to do and would like to move on with the investigation."

A few days after Biela refused to provide a sample of his DNA to the detective, Wygnanski and another Reno detective, David Jenkins, asked Biela's girlfriend a few questions. Among the things she told the cops was that Biela claimed to have obtained the panties found inside his truck at a Seattle coin-operated laundry facility. When all was said and done, she was unable to provide an alibi for Biela, and she allowed the detectives to obtain a DNA sample from the child she had with Biela. By Tuesday, November 25, 2008, a Washoe County crime lab technician told the investigators that Biela could not be excluded as a suspect in Brianna's case based on the comparison analysis of Biela's son's DNA to that of evidence obtained from swabs taken from Brianna's body. Biela was arrested later that same day when he showed up at a Reno-area daycare center to pick up his son, and DNA taken from Biela after his arrest matched DNA samples collected from Brianna's body. Biela's DNA was also found on a door handle at the house from which Brianna had disappeared.

Biela had "seemed surprised" when he was arrested, according to Detective Wygnanski.

"We wanted to arrest him before he got to the daycare (to pick up his son)," Wygnanski said. "But we arrested him when we did because we didn't want to take a chance on anything going wrong...I'm proud of our unit for sticking together and not giving up. My condolences to the family and to our families for putting up with us for all the long hours we worked. It's just very rewarding for us to finally get this person."

Wygnanski said that he and his colleagues did everything that they could to eliminate Biela as a suspect, but that they just had not been able to do so.

"All we had was evidence to say he was responsible," Wygnanski added. "I'm happy for the Denison family, and it brings a form of closure, but it will never bring Brianna back."

Biela, who worked as a pipe fitter and was believed to have been involved in a project in that capacity contracted with the University of Nevada - Reno, is a former Marine who had some training in martial arts. According to police records, Biela had lived in the Reno area since 2002, and had resided at one point in an apartment five minutes from the residence from which Brianna Denison had been abducted. The location from where Brianna had been abducted was approximately 500 feet from an apartment where a young woman had been raped in December 2007.

At a recent court appearance, it was revealed that a pair of women's underwear may have been used to strangle Brianna. At his preliminary hearing, a judge ordered that Biela be bound over for trial for the murder of Brianna Denison and for the sexual assaults of two other young women. Specifically, the charges that Biela is being held on include three counts of sexual assault, one count of first-degree kidnapping, one count of murder and one count of battery with intent to commit sexual assault. Additional charges are likely.

Photo Credit: Police Mug Shot