Jayann and Dave Sepich Extended Interviews

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – In this extended interview, Jayann Sepich recalls the moment she found out how hard her daughter fought to live the night she was murdered. “We found out not too much later that she had fought really hard and under her fingernails were skin and blood. Katie was a fighter,” Jayann said.

Katie was murdered in 2003. She had been brutally raped, strangled to death and then dumped in an old New Mexico landfill. For the past 16 years, Jayann Sepich has been on a worldwide campaign to get a law passed named after Katie, to try to protect other daughters. Its been a long road, but she said she’s not done yet.

The extended interview of Dave Sepich describes the moment he had to identify his daughter after her murder and how he became obsessed with the investigation.

Dave Sepich, the father of murdered New Mexico State University student Katie Sepich, says it remembers vividly the day he had to identify his 22-year-old daughter at the morgue. “I literally fell to my knees,” Dave said it hadn’t been for a support system of friends and family that helped him get through the months following his daughters brutally rape and murder in August of 2003.

Sepich said following the murder he became obsessed about finding his daughter’s killer. “I got Katie’s phone records, I went through every call,” Sepich said.” I made lists of who I thought could have done it. A DNA match is what helped link Katie’s murder to a suspect. The murderer was a complete stranger to the family and was sentenced to 69 years in prison.