Leslie Arnold: How DNA Traced Australian Family Man’s Murderous Past in US

New DNA evidence revealed Leslie Arnold, a man who shot and killed his parents in Nebraska when he was a teenager in 1958, escaped from prison in the US to Australia and lived a successful business and family life as John Damon.

His Australian family only knew of their patriarch's dark past after his death.

Arnold's Murder Case and Escape from Prison

Arnold was a talented musician and accomplished student before the crime. When he was 16, he killed his parents Bill and Opal after a dispute over the use of the family car and his relationship to a woman Arnold's mother called "white trash." He then buried their bodies in the backyard of their home in Omaha, Nebraska.

Arnold eventually confessed to the murder after his grandparents looked for his parents.

In an apology letter to his neighbors, he wrote of his remorse for the crime, saying his parents were "wonderful people."

"How I ever went so wrong, I'll never know," he added.

He was sentenced to life in jail at the Nebraska State Penitentiary. However, he escaped prison with another inmate after eight years and settled in Chicago by marrying a divorcee with four daughters. It was also during this time when he assumed the name John Damon.

Arnold's first family relocated to Cincinnati and Miami before he and his wife divorced and cut off all ties with his stepdaughters.

Life in Australia

He remarried his second wife, a foreign exchange student, in Los Angeles, with whom he had two children.

The family moved to New Zealand in 1992 and eventually migrated to Australia in 1997 to live a exemplary family life there until his death in 2010 due to a clotting condition.

According to Arnold's son, who requested to have his name withheld, he earned a respectable living and spared no expense for his children's education.

"He was almost overly supportive," he said. "He was so passionate and keen for my sister and I to have the best experiences, and the best opportunities possible."

An Unpleasant Surprise

Throughout his career with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services from 2004 to 2013, retired criminal investigator Geoff Britton pursued Arnold's case despite how impossible it might be.

He obtained DNA from Arnold's brother James in 2007 and submitted the profile to various criminal databases.

Eventually, US Marshal deputy Matthew Westover took over the investigation in 2020 as a cold case. With James Arnold's permission, the DNA sample was uploaded to a public database.

When Arnold's son submitted his DNA in August 2022 to a public database, he was surprised to learn he had a match with a man in the US who happened to be his uncle.

Westover reached out to Arnold's son to talk about the case.

"I couldn't believe it. [The son] said his dad was an orphan from Chicago," Westover recalled.

Westover traveled to Australia to obtain a sample of Arnold's DNA and took a picture of his grave.

"I'm glad he's dead," he said in relief after discovering the unusually good transformation of Arnold after escaping from prison. "As bad as that sounds, I'm glad because I really wouldn't want to put their family through that."

As for Britton, the case transformed his view on rehabilitation, admitting the view he once had of Arnold "has now changed."

Processing the Truth

For Arnold's son, the revelation that his father was a murderer back in the US was "just absolutely shocking." "It still doesn't feel real," he said.

While he maintained he was "a great father," he could not "sugarcoat" the story of Arnold's life of crime and evasion from the law.

After Arnold's death, his son found his bible with "lots of highlighted lines about sin, guilt and forgiveness," realizing his desire to make up for his wrongdoing.

"I think it weighed on his mind for the rest of his life," Arnold's son said.