Unsolved murder gets national airing

Journal Staff WriterEighteen years, one month and 25 days after the abduction and murder of Auburn resident Mary Lloyd, her unsolved mystery made national television.The circumstances surrounding her 1985 murder near Auburn were included in an episode of A&E?s ?Cold Case Files,? a nationally broadcast cable television program that follows the investigations of forensic detectives. Episode No. 45, ?License to Kill/The Tell-Tale Mark/The Supermarket Mystery,? first aired Aug. 19 at 9 p.m. and will air again Sept. 6. The last 20 minutes focus on the Lloyd case, with testimony from family members, crime scene photographs and a picture of a potential suspect, Charles Sinclair.Lloyd, 68, was on her way home from Mass on Tuesday, June 25, 1985, when she stopped at the Safeway store, then located on Elm Avenue and Highway 49, to get a carton of milk. While she was waiting for the store to open, a man attacked her in the parking lot. Several witnesses described watching while Lloyd was struck or stabbed several times before her assailant pulled her into her car and drove away. The car was found six days later in North Hollywood, but detectives found no evidence in the bloody vehicle. Lloyd?s body was found five days later, July 16, 1985, in Applegate. One of the first officers responding to the scene, Auburn Police Chief Nick Willick has been involved in the investigation ever since and appears on the show. The Auburn Police Department phone number is included in the segment, but no calls or tips have come through yet.?There?s always hope that there?s something else, a piece to the puzzle that was missing that, if found, would give us the information we need to solve a case,? he said. ?I certainly hope it will be solved. I know that if it isn?t solved by the time I retire, it will be one of my disappointments.?Lloyd?s daughter Sally Odell, a Lincoln resident and front desk worker at Sutter Medical Group in Auburn, said she was pleased by the program. Other family members, including her father and some of her brothers, found the show too painful to watch.?I felt even more positive about the show because it showed they were still working on the case,? Odell said. ?For a long time I thought they?d forgotten about her, but obviously they haven?t. Hopefully, from this, they?ll find that man.?Lloyd?s son, Auburn resident Tim Lloyd, a maintenance worker at Placer High School, watched the episode with his family.?They did a very good job,? he said Tuesday. ?There were a couple of spots in it that hurt a little bit ? they showed photos of the bloody car seats and what looked like a small hand, but they have to do that. I was very pleased.?While the details shown on ?Cold Case Files? were difficult, the family hopes the end result will be a conviction for her killer, said Sally Lloyd, Tim Lloyd?s wife. Although the tragedy occurred more than 18 years ago, she still refuses to return to the scene of her mother-in-law?s murder.?You think you?re ready to watch it, but then they do things like show her glasses and it breaks your heart,? she said. ?We weren?t ready for all that, but some of it has to be in there for people to understand about the crime and how important it is to find the person who did it. But it was still really sad.?Investigation in the case is ongoing and the Auburn Police Department is currently waiting for the results of DNA testing from the California Department of Justice, Willick said. ?We hope that maybe people will see this episode and give us some phone calls,? he said. ?That?s the value of programs like this. They?re able, through broadcasting the crime, to get people to step forward with ideas.?Watching the episode made Odell realize how much evidence was available to catch her mother?s killer, she said.?They have more evidence than I ever knew they had,? she said. ?I?ll watch the show again because hopefully that will be the end of it ? they?ll have solved the mystery.??The Supermarket Mystery? episode of ?Cold Case Files? will air again on A&E at 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6.