The Brianna Denison Case: Kidnapped While Sleeping At Her Friend’s House
By: Holly Alexis
Tags: Violence Against Women, Murderss, True Crime, Crime Drama, Murder

[Reno, Nevada]

19 year old Brianna Denison attended a party with her friends on the night of January 20th, 2008. After the party, she headed back to her friend’s house to spend the night. The door to the house was always kept unlocked for the girls to easily walk into. Brianna began making her bed for the night on the couch while her friends headed upstairs to sleep. The last sight her friends had of her was at 4:23am as she was texting her boyfriend.

The next morning, her friend came downstairs to find that Brianna was nowhere to be found. At first she wasn’t alarmed because she assumed that Brianna went home without saying goodbye. However, her phone, shoes, and clothes were still inside the home. There was also an alarming brown blood stain on the pillow that Brianna was sleeping with. Her friend immediately called Brianna’s mother to inform her about her discoveries followed by phoning the police. When detectives arrived at the home, they found touch DNA on the front door knob that belonged to an unidentified male. The DNA was linked to two other sexual attacks in the area. The blood stain on the pillow was confirmed to be Brianna’s blood which verified everyone’s worst nightmare. Police began focusing on a kidnapping scenario. Despite their searches assisted by the FBI, Reno Police were unable to locate Brianna anywhere.

On February 15th, 2008, a man returning from his lunch break noticed bright orange colored socks standing out among a pile of discarded tree limbs in a ditch. As he got closer, he realized that it was the body of a young female. She was naked, except for the bright orange socks that originally attracted his attention. When police arrived on the scene to investigate, the victim was confirmed to be Brianna Denison. Bold ligature marks on her neck and two pair of panties under her right knee suggested that she had been strangled to death with a woman’s thong. An autopsy also confirmed that Brianna had been raped. One pair of panties were later determined to belong to Brianna’s friend who said she had no idea that they were missing. The remaining pair had DNA on them that belonged to an unknown female.

The two victims who experienced attacks from the same unidentified male before Brianna’s murder were interviewed to explain their experience with the rapist. They said that the man was persistent about taking their underwear as a souvenir after the attack. The women were able to give a good enough description of the man and his truck for a composite sketch to be formed and released to the public.

On November 1st, 2008, an anonymous tip from a woman said that her friend confided in her about finding odd panties in her boyfriend’s truck. She added that the composite sketch of the man’s face and truck looked eerily similar to her friend’s boyfriend, James Biela.

Six days later, police interviewed Biela and asked for a DNA sample to which he refused. Investigators tried a second approach to getting his DNA by asking his girlfriend if they could swab Biela’s young son’s mouth. She agreed without any hesitation. As expected, the DNA from the little boy proved that he was related to Brianna’s killer.

On November 25th, 2008, James Biela was officially arrested for raping and murdering Brianna, as well as for the previous attacks. He was convicted of first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, sexual assault with the use of a deadly weapon and two counts of sexual assault.

Biela was sentenced to death plus four life sentences.