Another Cold Case Solved, by jay7777

[johnnyhands1]

Aug 5, 2021 19:23:13 GMT cherylh said:

Psychologists who specialize in crimes committed by teens and young adults have long theorized that there are many who commit a heinous crime once, and never again.

That's one source of "one-and-done" criminals. The people who commit a violent act when their brains are not fully formed, and then don't do it again as they change over time.

There's also considerable evidence that serial criminals experience reduced drive as they enter their 50s and 60s.

The old idea that once a person kills, they become driven to continue killing: There's never been any real evidence that that is true for most people who kill.

Serial killers are actually extremely rare, compared to the number of people who kill once.

The Unraveled Podcast Season 5 (hosts Billy Jensen, Alexis Linkletter) just premiered today, and the theme of this season just happens to be one-and-done killers. The first episode is about the 1992 Lancaster County PA  case of schoolteacher Christy Mirack - where suspect Raymond Rowe ("DJ Freez") was one of the earlier captures of forensic genealogy shortly after the GSK arrest.

From the preview of next week's Unraveled, they're going to continue with this case, but no mention in episode 1 of the second case, they haven't even said Rowe's name yet.

But Rowe may not have been a one-and-done killer, as this article I found written in September of last year alludes to. I don't know if that other case involved murder, but you'd think it was pretty serious if he was willing to plead guilty in a murder case to keep the other case from the public. Kind of odd they'd make a deal over one case that would hide the details of another case as part of that deal (what about the family of the victim of this unknown second crime?)    

EDIT: if the unknown second crime was, say, a sexual crime against a minor young enough to make it dangerous for him in prison, that would be motivation for Rowe to keep it under wraps - as a practical move, rather than a mysterious one.  The victim and family might also be inclined to avoid the publicity of a trial, satisfied Rowe would be permanently behind bars from the plea deal for the first crime.

lancasteronline.com/news/local/raymond-dj-freez-rowe-arrested-for-murder-of-schoolteacher-christy/article_f05a2ee4-78b2-11e8-ad10-4382ef42f96d.html

(boldface mine)

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Raymond ‘DJ Freez’ Rowe’s former lawyers say he confessed to killing Christy Mirack: testimony

Two attorneys who represented Raymond Rowe after he was arrested for the 1992 rape and murder of schoolteacher Christy Mirack said that Rowe was adamant that he wanted to plead guilty -- even as they explored potential defenses.

There was something else motivating him, they said: The county’s top prosecutor at the time was prepared to file criminal charges in another, unrelated crime.

And Rowe, the once-popular local entertainer known as DJ Freez, did not want the details ever to be known.

Testifying in a court hearing on Thursday, attorneys David Blanck and Patricia Spotts said Rowe told them that he’d been having a secret affair with Mirack, even though he was married and Mirack was involved with someone else.

Rowe had gone to her Greenfield Estates townhouse in East Lampeter Township on Dec. 21, 1992, where they had consensual sex, the attorneys testified he told them.

But Mirack also threatened to tell Rowe’s wife about their relationship. And Rowe wanted to break up with Mirack.

Blanck said Rowe never could give him an explanation of why he snapped and did what he did, “Other than it was his thug days coming through.”

Spotts said Rowe told her “he lost it on (Mirack) and that’s how she died.” She also said he told her, “That was the thug part of my life when I was using cocaine. But that is not who I am now.”

Rowe was 24 at the time of Mirack’s killing. He was 49 when he was arrested on June 25, 2018.

Rowe had never been a suspect in the killing until 2018, when genetic genealogy led detectives to Rowe; crime scene DNA matched DNA that Rowe’s half sister uploaded to a public genealogy database.

Rowe now wants Lancaster County Judge Dennis Reinaker to allow him to withdraw that guilty plea and go to trial -- something he avoided by pleading guilty to murder, rape and related charges in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty or filing the criminal charge he did not want known. The Jan. 8, 2019, plea took the death penalty off the table and avoided a trial in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole and an additional 60-120 years tacked on.

The details of those charges were not made public during Thursday’s hearing -- and they likely never will be. According to Blanck and Spotts, Rowe did not want the nature of the charges to become known -- ever. Then-District Attorney Craig Stedman agreed, they said.

Blanck and Spotts each testified that prosecutors had evidence supporting the charges. And if convicted, it would affect both Rowe’s incarceration in the state prison system and who could visit him.

That concerned Rowe greatly, according to Blanck and Spotts. Rowe is married and has a daughter with his wife.

Still, Blanck and Spotts said that while Rowe repeatedly said he wanted to plead guilty, they prepared for the possibility the case could go to trial.

A crime-of-passion defense or seeking a third-degree murder conviction were explored, they said, explaining how they assessed strategies.

However, Rowe could give them no one who could corroborate his claim that he and Mirack were having an affair. And because Rowe had told them he was guilty of the charges, they could not put him on the stand.

Still, their job was to get the best outcome for Rowe, they each said.

“Confession is irrelevant. The Commonwealth has to prove it,” Blanck said.

But the evidence wasn’t in their favor.

Though Blanck acknowledged under questioning by Rowe’s current attorney, Todd M. Mosser, that there wasn’t evidence of sexual trauma, he also said, “Consensual (sex) really doesn’t seem compatible with the beating this woman suffered.”

Mirack had been beaten and strangled -- by hands and by a sweater and undershirt. Her jaw was broken.

Rowe wasn’t particularly helpful as his attorneys pursued alternatives to a plea, according to Blanck and Spotts. He was adamant he wanted to plead guilty and he would not look at evidence.

Rowe refused to look at the autopsy report. And he refused to look at crime scene photos.

“I’ve never experienced it. Mr. Rowe didn’t want it. Didn’t want to look at it,” Blanck said.

And there would have been another problem with trying to argue that Rowe had consensual sex, but someone else killed her, Spotts said: how to explain the presence of his DNA in samples recovered from under her lifeless body.

But the perpetration of the murder by someone else is exactly what Rowe now contends.

In court filings, he now claims his DNA won’t be found on a cutting board used in the attack.

Under an agreement made by Rowe’s current attorney and the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office -- which opposes Rowe’s bid to withdraw his plea -- Blanck and Spotts were not bound by attorney client privilege and were required to answer questions at Thursday’s hearing, in which they testified separately without the other allowed in the courtroom.

Members of Mirack’s family and Rowe’s family were in court. Rowe’s wife testified briefly, concerning things police sought from their house after her husband was arrested.

Mirack’s brother declined to comment after the hearing.

The hearing is being held in response to an appeal Rowe filed under the Post Conviction Relief Act.

The hearing is scheduled to resume next Wednesday, with a Pennsylvania State Police crime lab witness expected to testify.
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[Jay7777]

Construction worker charged in cold case rapes after DNA link found: cops

nypost.com/2022/03/21/construction-worker-charged-in-cold-case-rapes-after-dna-link-found/

Kenneth David Downing was arrested by Pullman police after being connected to two home invasions and sexual assaults in 2003 and 2004.

A married construction worker in Washington state has been arrested for raping two women nearly two decades ago, police said.

Kenneth David Downing, 47, was taken into custody Thursday at a job site in Spokane after investigators linked him to two home invasions and sexual assaults in Pullman in November 2003 and March 2004.

“This cold case arrest was made possible through DNA matches, using evidence collected at the time that the crimes occurred,” Pullman police said in a statement.

Downing, of Elk, was tied to the attacks by investigators using forensic genetic genealogy. His bail was set at $5 million after prosecutors argued he’s still a threat to the public, KREM reported.

Downing, who appeared in court Friday, is facing four counts of rape, three counts of assault and other charges for allegedly attacking the two victims months apart.

Prosecutors said one woman told investigators the suspect sexually assaulted her three times during the attack and even made small talk at one point, asking her about her pets, KREM reported.

The woman still lives in fear some 18 years later, prosecutors said.


Kenneth Downing faces bail of $5 million after prosecutors argued he was still a menace to society.

Months after the initial attack, authorities said, Downing broke into another woman’s apartment and raped her at knifepoint after tying up and assaulting her roommate.

Cops took evidence from both crime scenes and later entered DNA into a genealogy database, ultimately leading them to Downing after one of his relatives sent in a sample to inquire about their lineage, KREM reported.

Downing, who faces up to life in prison if convicted, told a judge Friday he’s a married man with several children who has been living in the area for the last decade.


Kenneth Downs was identified by investigators using forensic genetic genealogy. He faces life imprisonment if he is convicted of the crimes.


Pullman police declined to identify the site where Downing was arrested, as well as which company he was working for at the time, the Spokesman-Review reported.

“I think that it’s important that after 18 years, our victims here in Pullman now can have some closure and don’t have to worry about this guy running around out there still,” Pullman police Sgt. Aaron Breshears told the newspaper.

Pullman police partnered with a private company in 2020 to take a look at the cold case, later identifying a “family tree” that narrowed down the search significantly, Breshears said.

“Rather than a needle in the haystack, we now had a family to look at, as far as suspects based upon this forensic genetic genealogy,” Breshears told the newspaper.

Downing, who has pleaded not guilty, was assigned a court-appointed attorney and is due back in court on March 25, KHQ-TV reported.

[Jay7777]

Suspect in 1971 killing in Massachusetts held without bail

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/suspect-in-1971-killing-in-massachusetts-held-without-bail/ar-AAVpxr2?ocid=iehp&li=BBnb7Kz

The man charged in the 1971 killing of a Massachusetts mother has a long criminal record and a general disdain for the justice system, the prosecutor said Wednesday in arguing that the suspect be detained without bail.

Other than saying “not guilty,” Arthur Louis Massei, 76, did not speak at his arraignment in Middlesex Superior Court on a charge of first-degree murder in connection with the killing more than 50 years ago of Natalie Scheublin in her Bedford home. He was held without bail.

His court-appointed attorney did not address the specifics of the case but asked that bail be set without prejudice so it can be revisited in the future.

Scheublin, 54, a mother of two, was found by her husband in the basement of their home on June 10, 1971, prosecutors said.

Prosecutor David Solet, the chief of the Middlesex District Attorney's Office cold case unit, told the judge that she was found bound around the ankles, face down, had multiple stab wounds, and had suffered a severe blow to the head from a blunt object.

Arthur Louis Massei, 76, of Salem, is arraigned in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, Mass., Wednesday, March 23, 2022. The man charged in the 1971 killing of a Massachusetts mother has a long criminal record and a general disdain for the justice system, the prosecutor said Wednesday in arguing that the suspect be detained without bail. His lawyer Julie Buszuwski is at left.


Arthur Louis Massei, 76, of Salem, is arraigned in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, Mass., Wednesday, March 23, 2022. The man charged in the 1971 killing of a Massachusetts mother has a long criminal record and a general disdain for the justice system, the prosecutor said Wednesday in arguing that the suspect be detained without bail. His lawyer Julie Buszuwski is at left. (Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)

Massei had long been a person of interest in the case, Solet said. He once told police he had been solicited by an organized crime figure to kill the victim for a fee, but had turned down the offer. He told police in a 2005 interview that he learned that a cousin had carried out the killing, and gave police details that confirmed his involvement, Solet said.


Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said Tuesday that there was no evidence that anyone had ever put out a contract on the victim.

Massei has a long record of criminal convictions and prison sentences, has assaulted corrections officers, has twice been convicted of escape, and as recently as 2016 was convicted of violating court orders involving harassment and abuse, Solet said.

“It appears that he has never been willing abide by court orders and cannot be expected to abide by conditions under these circumstances,” he said.

Massei was arrested at his Salem home on Tuesday based in large part on a 50-year-old fingerprint found in the victim’s car and information from a recently identified witness who said Massei once told her that he had killed someone using a knife.

The fingerprint was lifted from the victim's car, which was found in the parking lot of a nearby Veteran's Administration hospital shortly after the killing. Using updated technology not available in 1971, the fingerprint was linked to Massei in 1999, prosecutors said.

Scheublin's children have been informed of the arrest and have asked for privacy, Ryan said.

[Jay7777]

Probably been post already but interesting to read:

She waited 42 years to learn who killed her sister. The answer didn’t ease her pain.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/she-waited-42-years-to-learn-who-killed-her-sister-the-answer-didn-t-ease-her-pain/ar-AAVDsEy?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=83e8c3ec8a694c42b366e63cc303bd36

In the kitchen of her Rhode Island apartment, Irene Wilkowitz braced for what the detectives had come to tell her.

The last time police had arrived at her door, she was 17 and they told her they’d found her sister’s body. Eve, 20, had been kidnapped, raped and strangled after taking a late-night train home from Manhattan, where she worked as a secretary at a publishing house, on March 22, 1980. Her body was left in a yard near her apartment in Bay Shore, New York, on Long Island’s South Shore.

That was 42 years ago. Wilkowitz had since gone to college, worked, married, raised two children, divorced and moved away from Long Island, always in fear that the killer would one day come for her. Wondering if they’d ever catch him.

She became Eve’s last advocate, emailing detectives for updates every few weeks and urging them to try an investigative technique involving DNA that has recently helped crack hundreds of cold cases around the country. The detectives told her they were trying.

Now, waiting for their news, she tried not to expect too much. She couldn’t bear more disappointment. She took a deep breath.

“We identified the person responsible for the death of your sister, Eve,” Suffolk County Police Detective Jeffrey Bottari said.

Wilkowitz’s legs began shaking. She hugged her son, Evan, 25, named in Eve’s memory. “I started crying because I never thought I’d hear those words,” Wilkowitz recalled.

His name was Herbert Rice. He died of cancer in 1991, with two sons who had no idea what he’d done, Bottari said. In the sweeping and exhaustive investigation of the murder, in which police canvassed dozens of streets and interviewed hundreds of people, Rice had never attracted suspicion. He had a short record of arrests for nonviolent offenses, which did not require him to provide a DNA sample that would have been put in criminal databases. A query for relatives in the criminal database, known as a familial DNA search, failed as well.

It was the new technology, known as genetic genealogy, that finally gave police the answer.

“Without DNA, this wouldn’t have ever been solved,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said.

On Wednesday, Suffolk County authorities will hold a news conference naming Rice as the killer. Wilkowitz will travel from Rhode Island to thank the detectives and speak for Eve. But knowing who killed her sister won’t repair four decades of terror, anxiety and loss.

“For 42 years, this was all I wanted — I just wanted it to be over,” Wilkowitz said this week. “My goal was to be a mom, and beyond that I didn’t allow myself to dream any other dream because I was afraid someone would come along and murder me. So I can’t process that it’s solved now, and that I’m still here.”

Eve was Wilkowitz’s only sibling. Their mother died of cancer before Eve’s death, and their father died in 2010, leaving Irene as the last family member who could speak on Eve’s behalf. On anniversaries of her death, she did interviews with local media, a way to keep Long Island from forgetting.

"She wasn’t famous. She wasn’t a celebrity. She was my sister, and she matters,” Wilkowitz said.

A DNA match
In 2018, Wilkowitz’s son told her about a new investigative technique authorities in California had used to identify the serial rapist and murderer known as the Golden State Killer. Police had entered crime-scene DNA into consumer DNA databases, including GEDmatch, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage, and traced the family tree back to a former police officer.

The case was the first use of genetic genealogy to solve a violent crime. It led to a surge of interest in the method and spawned a mini-industry of private labs working with genetic genealogists to re-examine decades-old crimes. But the tactic also raised concerns among privacy advocates who feared government misuse of people’s personal data, and some states were hesitant to allow its use.

In January 2019, Wilkowitz contacted the most famous of the genetic genealogists, CeCe Moore, and asked for her help. Moore told Wilkowitz that she couldn’t get involved because New York didn’t yet allow the technique. The state Department of Health required private labs to obtain a permit to do such work, a rigorous process that can take months or years, and had not granted permission to any lab. (The Department of Health has since granted permits to two companies to perform genetic genealogy for police in New York.)

Wilkowitz pleaded with Suffolk County Police Lt. Kevin Beyrer, a homicide investigator who oversaw Eve’s case, to find a way. He, too, was frustrated that he could not try genetic genealogy. But in December 2019, Suffolk County authorities came up with a workaround: They asked the New York Department of Health to let them send DNA from semen found on Eve’s body to the FBI. The FBI had helped with the original 1980 investigation and was not restricted by New York laws.

The state and the FBI agreed, and in July 2021, an FBI agent specializing in genetic genealogy told Suffolk County detectives she’d found a distant relative of the unknown suspect, along with a last name: Rice. Working on that information, detectives landed on Herbert Rice, who was long dead. Unable to get a DNA sample to confirm their theory, they tracked down one of his sons. After failing to collect a DNA sample from him covertly, Bottari, the detective, knocked on the son’s door and told him what they were trying to do.

The son said he hadn’t been close to his father and allowed the detective to swab his cheek, Bottari said. The DNA sample verified in late August that the son’s father was the killer.

Bottari told the son and his mother, who filled in more of the story.

At the time of the murder, the son’s mother said, she had kicked Rice out of their house, according to detectives. Rice had moved in with his mother, who lived about four houses from the yard where Eve Wilkowitz’s body was discovered on March 25, 1980, detectives said. In the case file, detectives saw that Rice’s mother had been questioned by police who canvassed the neighborhood. She told them she hadn’t noticed anything, Bottari said.

Rice’s son had done nothing wrong, but he told detectives he still wished he could apologize to Wilkowitz’s family, police said.

Rice’s son could not immediately be reached for comment. The son’s mother declined to comment.

Unanswered questions
On Dec. 6, Bottari and a sergeant from the homicide unit visited Irene Wilkowitz in Rhode Island to tell her what they’d found.

Wilkowitz, who works as a nanny, shares an apartment with her son, because she remains afraid to live alone. Knowing the chances of a breakthrough were slim, she thought that the detectives were probably coming to say they’d hit a final dead end. She introduced them to Evan and made small talk while Bottari used FaceTime to patch in the FBI agent who’d done the genealogical investigation.

“These are the most exciting kinds of visits we can do, to give a family some sort of answer,” Bottari said. “Especially for her. We had decades of detectives who worked on this.”

Wilkowitz cried in her son’s arms while the detectives gave her Rice’s name and birthdate. They told her how they’d figured it out. It amazed her.

She thanked the detectives, and after about 30 minutes, they left. Wilkowitz leaned against her kitchen island for a while, crying. Still shaking, she called Beyrer and thanked him.

Wilkowitz said she was open to talking to Rice’s son. Bottari tried connecting them. The son has told detectives he is considering it, Bottari said.

“I just want to say thank you,” Wilkowitz said, “and how sorry I feel for him and his family to know that a family member is responsible for a crime like this and they have to live knowing that. It’s horrible for them as well.”

Before announcing the case was solved, Suffolk County authorities wanted to make sure they had the right man. So they got a search warrant to exhume Rice’s body. The results came back March 23, nearly 42 years to the day Eve went missing. The samples taken from the remains matched the suspect’s DNA, Bottari said. It was him.

“There is no way we would have gotten to where we are today had it not been for science and genetic genealogy to let us dig deep, find family members and get us to Mr. Rice,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said.

Beyrer praised Wilkowitz for keeping attention on the search for the killer.

“She deserves the credit and I think she’s the star in this case,” Beyrer said.

The case is now closed. But Wilkowitz still suffers from the trauma of losing her sister, and of going decades not knowing who killed her. She still has questions that will never be answered.

“I can’t ask him anything — why did he do it? Why did he pick on an innocent beautiful woman who was just walking home?” Wilkowitz said. “There are no real answers, no reason why.”

She wants to find a way to continue being a voice for her sister — and maybe for the families of other victims whose cases remain cold. To say there is always hope.

When she speaks Wednesday at the news conference, she will hold a picture of Eve and their parents. And she will tell whoever is listening that her sister wasn’t just a story told and retold in the media.

“She was a real person,” Wilkowitz said. “She was outgoing, had lots of friends, loved horses, loved music, liked to read and write and draw. And she liked to be a big sister to me. I want people to know that.”

[Jay7777]

RI woman sees face of man who killed her sister - 4 decades later

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/ri-woman-sees-face-of-man-who-killed-her-sister-4-decades-later/ar-AAVIv8X?ocid=iehp&li=BBnb7Kz

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (WPIX) - Irene Wilkowitz drove hours from Rhode Island to Riverhead, New York, on Wednesday to attend a press conference about her sister’s 1980 murder case. And for the first time, she saw the killer’s face.

“I didn’t want to see him,” Irene Wilkowitz said tearfully, looking at a poster showing a photo of the late Herbert Rice, accused now of strangling 20-year-old Eve Wilkowitz 42 years ago. “The last face Eve saw while she was still alive. Now I’m seeing him, so it’s very upsetting for me.”


Herbert Rice was 29 years old then, and staying at a house in Bay Shore, New York. The house was four or five homes away from where Eve Wilkowitz’s body was discovered on March 25, 1980.

Rice died in 1991 of cancer, 11 years after the murder.

District Attorney Raymond Tierney and Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, together with members of the county’s Homicide Squad and agents from the FBI, made the formal announcement Wednesday that Rice was the killer. Their partnership successfully cracked the first “cold case” in Suffolk County history by utilizing genetic genealogy.

Genetic genealogy involves the use of public websites that hold DNA to search for ancestors or close relatives. Law enforcement has been using the sites more and more to track criminals, most famously in the Golden State Killer case in California, where an ex-police officer was tied to dozens of rapes and murders in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1980, Suffolk County detectives recovered evidence from Eve Wilkowitz that revealed she had been raped before she was murdered. But the science at the time was not sophisticated, and no killer was identified, so the evidence kit remained in storage.

Eve Wilkowitz, who was working at MacMillian Publishing in Manhattan at the time, had taken the last train home to Bay Shore on Friday, March 22, 1980.

Twenty years later, as DNA science started progressing, homicide detectives wanted to retrieve genetic samples from the evidence kit. Forensic experts were able to develop a genetic profile of the unknown killer.

It would be nearly another 20 years before Suffolk County detectives approached the FBI about searching genetic genealogy websites, hoping there would be some kind of match with the unnamed killer’s DNA from the Eve Wilkowitz crime scene.

Last fall, investigators found that DNA from the Wilkowitz murder was linked to a distant relative of the killer, who had submitted a sample to a genealogy website. Their investigation led them to the son of Herbert Rice, who cooperated with detectives and was swabbed for genetic material. There was a strong link to the DNA from the Wilkowitz evidence kit.

On March 10, 2022, Suffolk County police exhumed the skeletal remains of Herbert Rice, who was 40 years old when he died in 1991.

More than 30 years later, the Suffolk County crime lab retrieved a DNA sample from Rice’s remains on March 23, 2022. It was a solid match with the genetic material in the Eve Wilkowitz evidence kit.

Irene Wilkowitz thanked the Rice family members who helped solve the case.

“His family didn’t know anything about it, so I feel very badly for them,” Irene Wilkowitz said at the press conference.

District Attorney Tierney showed an aerial shot of the neighborhood surrounding the Bay Shore Long Island Railroad station, where Eve Wilkowitz had gotten off a train shortly before she was murdered. Tierney said Herbert Rice often hung around the station, drinking.

“Unfortunately, we believe it was a crime of opportunity,” he said.

The county’s police commissioner, Rodney Harrison, thanked his predecessor, Geraldine Hart, for recruiting the FBI to join the investigation. And he thanked homicide detectives and their leader, Lt. Kevin Beyrer, for never giving up on the case.

South Carolina man gets life in 1976 murder cold case
Eve Wilkowitz’s sister cried as she recalled the trauma she’s lived with for more than four decades.

“I’ve lived these past 42 years afraid all the time,” Irene Wilkowitz said. “I always thought someone else was right around the corner coming after me, too.”

Irene Wilkowitz said her sister never got a chance to fulfill her dreams or become a mother. Irene Wilkowitz herself is a mother of two, and her oldest child, Evan, is named for his aunt.

“I want you to know that Eve and all other murder victims are not just stories,” Irene Wilkowitz said at the press conference. “She was a real person. She loved to go horseback riding. She had lots of friends.”

[Jay7777]

Deceased deputy suspected of killing girl in 1983 cold case

www.newsnationnow.com/prime/deceased-deputy-suspected-of-killing-girl-in-1983-cold-case/

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (NewsNation Now) — The only suspect in the 1983 murder of an 11-year-old girl is a now-dead Florida deputy, the St. Lucie County, Florida Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday.

Lora Ann Huizar was found dead three days after she was reported missing. She was last seen walking home from a gas station.

Det. Paul Taylor, who worked the case, said the pieces started coming together when he visited the spot she was last seen.

“I looked to the east and you could see the store where she’d left her friend,” Taylor said Thursday on “NewsNation Prime. “If you look to the south, you can see her mailbox down by the street.”

It suggested the killer had a small window of time in which to act.

Taylor built up several suspects as he investigated the case, only to see the case against them eventually crumble. The only one that fit the evidence was James Howard Harrison, a St. Lucie deputy at the time.

The rural area where Huizar was found was in Harrison’s patrol area, Taylor said. People familiar with the case told Taylor that Harrison was asked about the girl’s death, but there were no official records of him being interviewed.

Harrison had instructed two witnesses to leave the scene approximately 20 minutes before additional law enforcement personnel arrived, St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Brian Hester said at a news conference. Cold case detectives also learned that the location and position of Huizar’s body documented by initial crime scene investigators and detectives differed from initial witness accounts, he said.

Taylor said on “NewsNation Prime” this is the fourth cold case he’s solved since assuming that beat in 2019. He was returning to work after a shoulder injury and decided to look into those cases to ease back into duty. He solved a case within two months, and soon became the county’s first cold case detective.

[Jay7777]

Western Michigan University students help police crack 1987 murder cold case

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/western-michigan-university-students-help-police-crack-1987-murder-cold-case/ar-AAVIvye?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=c1630dc355d24001a9d7dde75f68363e

team of Western Michigan University students helped police crack a murder cold case that went unsolved for 35 years — and helped bring a woman's killer to justice, authorities said Thursday.

Patrick Wayne Gilham, 67, has pleaded no contest to the second-degree murder of Roxanne Leigh Wood, 30, in her Niles Township, Michigan, home on Feb. 20, 1987, police said.

He's agreed to be sentenced to at least 23 years in prison, officials said.

"You can imagine, after that long, wanting something to be solved — it was a relief," Michigan State Police Detective First Lt. Charles Christensen told NBC News.

Police paired up with Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program and the students played a key organizational role in cataloging a 3,000-page case file and thinking out loud alongside investigators, officials said.

“The more eyes the better,” Christensen said. "We had all our numbers in there, the names. It was important. Obviously this guy pled, but it really comes into play coming in court. Now you have this whole file categorized. "

The path leading to Gilham’s arrest was much more clear with police pressing computer buttons rather than digging through boxes and boxes of yellowing paper.

“This program provided organizational and informational support," state police said in a statement.

WMU sociology professor and Cold Case Program director Ashlyn Kuersten estimated that doctoral students Ashley Chlebek and Carl Huber logged about 1,200 hours of work over eight months on Wood’s case.

“The organizational part of this was the beauty of this. I mean this was an old case file, things aren’t digitized,” said Kuersten. “So we made it all digitized and they searched license plate numbers, by someone’s name, variation on a town’s name, a comment someone made. It just made it easier for the police could do their work.”

Wood was bowling with her husband the night she was killed, but they drove home separately with the wife getting back first. When Wood’s husband got home, he found her dead with her throat slit.

The killer sexually assaulted Woods and his DNA was left at the crime scene.

DNA public data bases eventually led to Gilham’s family tree and three brothers as the final suspects, Berrien County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Jerry Vigansky said.

Finally, a discarded cigarette picked up by detectives during a three-day-long surveillance of Gilham directly implicated him, according to Christensen.

Gilham had spent time in an Indiana prison before 1987, long before law enforcement began swabbing DNA samples from some inmates.

“Even with the DNA and how long it’s been in existence, his DNA was not on record anywhere,” Vigansky said.

Gilham was arrested on Feb. 20 and he'll be formerly sentenced in April, authorities said.

There were no known ties between Gilham and the victim, other than that he lived on the same South Bend street as Wood's mother, police said.

"I'm thinking he was at that bowling alley that night and followed her from there," Christensen said. "He was a predator."

Gilham's defense lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday.

[Jay7777]

Not very cold but still interesting to read and this statement: "(The defendant was going to dispose of Mr. Gallina's body in a highly inappropriate way. Something that you would see straight out of the movies)," Makes me wonder if the body was intended to be ground up and used in the pizza!?

Pizza shop owner killed partner and hid body for weeks, police say

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/pizza-shop-owner-killed-partner-and-hid-body-for-weeks-police-say/ar-AAVKo23?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=c1630dc355d24001a9d7dde75f68363e

Hilltown Township, Pa. — A Bucks County, Pa. pizza restaurant owner killed her longtime partner and shop co-owner and hid his body for weeks, police say.

They accused Anna Maria Tolomello of shooting Giovanni Gallina in the head, CBS Philly reports.

A small makeshift memorial for Gallina filled with candles and roses sprang up inside Pina's Pizza in New Britain, Pa.

"Right now, I am shaking," said Carlo Vitale, Gallina's nephew, who works at the pizza shop.

He's trying to keep the business up and running and says the news came as a shock.

"I still can't believe it. Everything that's happened. I still right now look like I wake up. I'm dreaming," Vitale said.

Gallina's son reported him missing after not hearing from him and Tolomello told him his father was out of town.

Police showed up at the couple's home with a search warrant Tuesday.

They say Tolomello told officers she knew why they were there and told them she shot Gallina out of self-defense on March 16. Officers found his body wrapped in a tarp in the master bedroom.

"The defendant was going to dispose of Mr. Gallina's body in a highly inappropriate way. Something that you would see straight out of the movies," Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said.

Hole spotted by CBS Philly outside home of Anna Maria Tolomello and Giovanni Gallina. They co-owned a Pennsylvania pizza shop. She's accused of fatally shooting him in the head. She claims self-defense. Police say she hid his body for weeks, and it was found in a tarp in their bedroom.

Chopper 3 spotted a huge hole next to the home.

As the investigation continues, the Bucks Bounty community is shaken.

"I was pretty surprised. This is a pretty quiet area," one man told CBS Philly.

"This hits the community very hard. These people were considered to be staples in their community. Pina's Pizza is a very well-known restaurant and pizza shop," Weintraub said.

Tolomello was arraigned Wednesday. She's facing criminal homicide and other charges.

[Jay7777]

Convicted serial killer Khalil Wheeler-Weaver charged in murder of missing Newark teenager Mawa Doumbia

www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-jersey-serial-killer-convicted/

NEWARK, N.J. -- A convicted serial killer is now charged in the murder of a Newark teenager.

Khalil Wheeler-Weaver is accused in the death of 15-year-old Mawa Doumbia.

The teen was last seen leaving her family home in Newark in 2016.

Police allege Wheeler-Weaver strangled Mawa after meeting her online and then arranging to meet in-person.

Last year, Wheeler-Weaver was sentenced to 160 years in jail in connection with the murder of three women and the attempted murder of a fourth.


Here is that story:

ESSEX COUNTY, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) – A 23-year-old New Jersey serial killer, charged in the murders of three women and the attempted murder of a fourth, has been convicted on all counts.

www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-jersey-serial-killer-convicted/


An Essex County jury deliberated for just two hours last Thursday before convicting Khalil Wheeler-Weaver, who now faces a potential sentence of life plus 80 years in prison.

Prosecutors said Wheeler-Weaver, of Orange, killed 20-year-old Sarah Butler, 33-year-old Joanne Brown, and 19-year-old Robin West in 2016. They also accuse him of trying to kill another woman that year after connecting with the women using a social media app.

Wheeler-Weaver was convicted of murder, desecrating human remains, kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, and aggravated arson.

"Wheeler-Weaver mistakenly believed that they were anonymous people, people on the margins, whose disappearance and ultimately their death would not matter, this team assembled here today proved otherwise," Ted Stephens, the acting Essex County Prosecutor said.

Wheeler-Weaver's public defenders confirmed that their client had arranged sexual encounters with the women but said he dropped them off safely at the end of each encounter and didn't harm anyone.

[johnnyhands1]

Apr 1, 2022 17:05:58 GMT Jay7777 said:

Western Michigan University students help police crack 1987 murder cold case

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/western-michigan-university-students-help-police-crack-1987-murder-cold-case/ar-AAVIvye?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=c1630dc355d24001a9d7dde75f68363e

team of Western Michigan University students helped police crack a murder cold case that went unsolved for 35 years — and helped bring a woman's killer to justice, authorities said Thursday.

Patrick Wayne Gilham, 67, has pleaded no contest to the second-degree murder of Roxanne Leigh Wood, 30, in her Niles Township, Michigan, home on Feb. 20, 1987, police said.

He's agreed to be sentenced to at least 23 years in prison, officials said.

"You can imagine, after that long, wanting something to be solved — it was a relief," Michigan State Police Detective First Lt. Charles Christensen told NBC News.

Police paired up with Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program and the students played a key organizational role in cataloging a 3,000-page case file and thinking out loud alongside investigators, officials said.

“The more eyes the better,” Christensen said. "We had all our numbers in there, the names. It was important. Obviously this guy pled, but it really comes into play coming in court. Now you have this whole file categorized. "

The path leading to Gilham’s arrest was much more clear with police pressing computer buttons rather than digging through boxes and boxes of yellowing paper.

“This program provided organizational and informational support," state police said in a statement.

WMU sociology professor and Cold Case Program director Ashlyn Kuersten estimated that doctoral students Ashley Chlebek and Carl Huber logged about 1,200 hours of work over eight months on Wood’s case.

“The organizational part of this was the beauty of this. I mean this was an old case file, things aren’t digitized,” said Kuersten. “So we made it all digitized and they searched license plate numbers, by someone’s name, variation on a town’s name, a comment someone made. It just made it easier for the police could do their work.”

Wood was bowling with her husband the night she was killed, but they drove home separately with the wife getting back first. When Wood’s husband got home, he found her dead with her throat slit.

The killer sexually assaulted Woods and his DNA was left at the crime scene.

DNA public data bases eventually led to Gilham’s family tree and three brothers as the final suspects, Berrien County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Jerry Vigansky said.

Finally, a discarded cigarette picked up by detectives during a three-day-long surveillance of Gilham directly implicated him, according to Christensen.

Gilham had spent time in an Indiana prison before 1987, long before law enforcement began swabbing DNA samples from some inmates.

“Even with the DNA and how long it’s been in existence, his DNA was not on record anywhere,” Vigansky said.

Gilham was arrested on Feb. 20 and he'll be formerly sentenced in April, authorities said.

There were no known ties between Gilham and the victim, other than that he lived on the same South Bend street as Wood's mother, police said.

"I'm thinking he was at that bowling alley that night and followed her from there," Christensen said. "He was a predator."

Gilham's defense lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday.

They don't seem to come right out and say it was genetic genealogy that solved the case, and they're putting a lot of emphasis on the university students work (it seems, with the DNA link, even without knowing, say, suspect Gilham lived on the same street as victim Wood's mother, they would have still arrested him).

So I'm wondering if it was a combination of forensic genealogy being narrowed down by the work of the students.  In other words, suspect Gilham became one of the suspects due to the students work (or the police using the digitized student work) BEFORE they had linked him genetically. That is, Gilham, as a suspect had his relatives directly focused on in the genetic genealogy hunt - as opposed to using public records exclusively to build the tree down to the suspect, as it seems was done in most of the forensic genealogy cold case solves we've heard of.

I'm thinking they could have built a tree up from suspect Gilham a generation or two from public records which would have avoided the other side of the hunt going down trees from the common ancestor (of Gilham and his relative(s) who uploaded their DNA into a public database) that didn't seem as fruitful in matching Gilham for whatever reason.

If so, that seems like something new (or maybe it isn't, we've just never been given the details of suspect-relatives-led forensic genealogy.)  It might mean they tried the same thing with other suspects in this case but it never led anywhere - because those suspects' individual DNA couldn't be linked - as you would expect, because those suspect didn't commit the murder.

Just to be more clear and simple of what I'm trying to express, I'm asking if this is what happened: Gilham was a suspect to the investigators (in a potential list of suspects) before his name became part of the known genetic tree down from the common ancestor (as opposed to being in a list of a bunch of genetic tree relatives from the common ancestor, then becoming a suspect - as it seems was the case for GSK.)  Then did that police suspect list guide the genetic genealogy hunt?

[almagata]

Mar 10, 2022 22:33:11 GMT Jay7777 said:

Greensburg man convicted in Shelby County 1980s home invasion sexual assaults

www.wthr.com/article/news/crime/jury-to-decide-verdict-in-trial-of-greensburg-man-charged-in-shelby-county-1980s-home-invasion-sexual-assaults-steven-ray-hessler-shelbyville/531-31bc27da-1602-40a9-834d-92f0e0851924

A jury deliberated for five hours before finding Steven Ray Hessler guilty on all 19 counts.

SHELBYVILLE, Ind. — A Greensburg man accused of a series of sexual assaults has been found guilty on all counts.

The prosecution called Steven Ray Hessler “a master sadist” who carried a “rape kit” as they reviewed the horrific details of seven home invasion sexual assaults in Shelby County in the 1980s during closing arguments in Hessler’s trial Friday morning. Some family members of the victims in the packed courtroom gallery were overcome with emotion hearing the account of the attacks. Hessler faces 19 felony charges for crimes against 10 victims between 1982-85.


A jury began deliberations about 1 p.m. Friday on the evidence heard over eight days in Shelby County Circuit Court. Several victims and Hessler testified during the trial.

After about five hours, the jury returned guilty verdicts on all 19 counts in the case. Hessler will be sentenced April 1 at 10 a.m. He faces up to 50 years in prison for each count.

"I intend to seek a sentence sufficient to ensure that he dies in prison – never to hurt anyone again," Shelby County Prosecutor Brad Landwerlen said in a release.

The courtroom gallery was filled with victims and their families to hear the verdicts read by the judge. They embraced and celebrated with prosecutors and investigators after Hessler’s conviction.

“It’s a huge relief,” said a woman who identified herself as victim number two. “I don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

That woman was awakened on Nov. 1, 1982, after Hessler forced his way into her home. Her son was asleep in bed next to her. Hessler held a knife to her throat and said if she didn't comply he would hurt her son. Hessler made her put on a nightgown before raping her. He told her if she called police, he would be back.

Almost 30 years since the attack, the woman encouraged rape victims to always come forward.

Case background
DNA evidence left at the final crime scene led to Hessler’s arrest at his Greensburg home in August 2020.


The prosecution noted similarities and links between the attacks of an armed man, including:

Often wearing military-style boots and a ski mask
Raping women or forcing them to perform sexual acts, sometimes with an enema water bottle, sometimes for hours
The suspect wore a chain wallet in most of the attacks.

He used Vaseline in every attack.
The suspect wanted to take photos of the sexual acts.
The suspect sometimes asked for a Pepsi.
The suspect threatened to come back years later.
The suspect told one victim about a previous attack on a mother and daughter.
The suspect told another victim that police had arrested the wrong man for the attacks.

“All of these attacks, they’re all the same guy,” said Shelby County deputy prosecutor Brandon Robinson.

The prosecution called Hessler’s Greensburg home a “treasure trove” of evidence that linked Hessler to the crimes, items that Hessler would have kept for 35 years.


Investigators found 23 Polaroid photos in a bedroom safe of a couple engaged in sex acts. A detective identified the photos as being the couple that was attacked Feb. 2, 1983. In that incident, the suspect approached a man outside his home and forced him inside with a gun. The suspect forced the man and a woman in the home to perform sex acts on each other. He told them he was paid to do this to them. The suspect reportedly photographed the two victims and left with some cash.


Also recovered from Hessler’s home was a black coat, black gloves, black ski mask, black military-style boots, chain style wallets, knives, handcuffs and keys, a shoulder gun holster, multiple enema waterbags, and jars of petroleum jelly that were seized from Hessler’s house. All the items matched descriptions given by victims in the 1980s attacks.

The prosecution also pointed out hundreds of searches on Hessler’s computers about the case and the victims, and files of saved photos of the victims, their houses and newspaper articles about the case.

Hessler also had many enema porn videos on his computer and on videotape and DVD.

“These victims have been waiting for more than 35 years to identify their attacker, waiting for more than 35 years for justice. Their attacker is sitting right there,” said Robinson, pointing at Hessler sitting in the courtroom.

Defense attorney Bryan Cook countered in closing arguments, “It’s a hot mess of a case the state has.”


Cook told the jury that Hessler did not commit the first six attacks. He pointed out that they have no DNA evidence tying Hessler to those attacks. He says the victims all estimated the age of their attacker in his 30s. Hessler was 19-to-22 years old at the time of the attacks.

Cook says that the woman in the final attack, where DNA evidence was collected on the garage floor from Hessler’s semen, was actually involved in a fantasy romance with Hessler gone wrong in which the woman’s husband was pistol-whipped and suffered permanent injuries.

“It’s extremely unfair to wait 35 to 38 years to charge Steven with these offenses,” said Cook. “We’re missing evidence. We’re missing victims. The right thing to do is to find him not guilty on all counts.”

In 2019, investigators became aware of new DNA technology that might be helpful in the case. Parabon NanoLabs analyzed the DNA of the unknown suspect through genetic genealogy testing. Parabon’s research narrowed investigators search to Hessler or his brother. Investigators obtained a clandestine DNA sample from Hessler, and it matched the unknown suspect DNA.

Background on cold cases
There were a reported 10 victims in seven different incidents from 1982-85. Some of the incidents happened while the women were home alone and others while a husband or children were present. In one case, the suspect beat the husband of one of the victims so severely as to cause permanent disabilities.

Aug. 14, 1982 — A woman awakened after a man entered her home through an unlocked door. He had a knife and took money from her purse. He threatened if she didn't perform sexual acts, he'd hurt her young daughters. He also asked her to put on sexy clothing and assaulted her. The man said he was paid by her ex-husband to do this to her. If she reported it to police, he said he would come back and get her daughters when they were coming home from school.

Nov. 1, 1982 — A woman awakened after a man forced his way into her home. Her son was asleep in the bed next to her. A man held a knife to her throat. The man claimed he was paid money to come there and hurt her. He said if she didn't comply, he would hurt her son. The man made her put on sexy clothing before assaulting her. He told her if she called police, he would be back.

Dec. 16, 1982 — Two women were sexually assaulted — a mother and a daughter. The daughter was awake when a man entered her room, holding a knife. He then forced her to perform sexual acts. The suspect also forced the mother to perform sexual acts and claimed he was a police officer. He tried to take pictures of the victims, but there wasn't film in their camera.

Feb. 2, 1983 — The suspect approached a man outside his home and forced them inside with a gun. He forced the man and a woman in the home to perform sex acts on each other. He told them he was paid to do this to them. The suspect also reportedly photographed the two victims and left with some cash.

Feb. 18, 1984 — A woman was in the shower when a man came in with a gun. The suspect asked the woman if she knew about his other assaults and bragged that police arrested the wrong man. He told her if she cooperated, he would never come back. He photographed the woman wearing sexy clothing. The man threatened to harm her if she reported the incident. He referenced that she served him food at a restaurant one previous night. He left after taking a small amount of cash.

Nov. 25, 1984 — A man forced entry into a home and had a gun on him. He woke up the victim's daughter and forced the mother to perform sex acts. He took a small amount of cash and left.

Aug. 17, 1985 — A man forced entry to a home and woke up to victims at gunpoint. He told them he'd kill them if they didn't do what he said and demanded money. The woman told the suspect she had a heart condition and faked a heart attack. The suspect then beat the male victim over the head with his gun, causing permanent brain damage and physical disabilities. He then took the female victim to the garage and forced her to perform sex acts. He then threatened to come back and kill them if they went to police. Investigators were able to recover DNA evidence from the garage.

On July 10, 2019, a task force used a genetic testing at a company called Parabon to potentially determine a suspect. The DNA testing found the suspect would have either been Steven Ray Hessler or his brother. Police determined Hessler lived in the Greensburg area at the time of the crimes.

A lot of common behavior with Deangelo.  I hope Hessler is miserable in prison and his victims find a bit of peace with his conviction. 

[Jay7777]

Decades after multiple women murdered, police identify 'I-65 Killer' as man from Kentucky

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/decades-after-multiple-women-murdered-police-identify-i-65-killer-as-man-from-kentucky/ar-AAVLVSP?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=10c924e27b53432ca525ed150680dd4b

Investigators have identified a serial killer who took numerous lives decades ago in Kentucky and Indiana.

The so-called "I-65 Killer" or the "Days Inn Killer" raped and killed three women who worked as clerks at motels along the Interstate 65 corridor during the 1980s.


Indiana State Police said that FBI used a new scientific technique to identify the killer as Harry Edward Greenwell, who died of cancer in 2013.

He was born in Kentucky and died in Iowa.

One of the victims, Vicki Heath, was found shot behind a Super 8 in Elizabethtown in February 1987.

Indiana State Police previously released a sketch of the killer, but the case had remained unsolved for years.

They say the new technique that helped solve the case used "investigative genealogy."

"We would have loved to put him in jail before he passed away, but unfortunately, that didn't happen," one official said.

This story will be updated.

READ THE FULL STORY:Decades after multiple women murdered, police identify 'I-65 Killer' as man from Kentucky

[Jay7777]

I posted about his arrest before but this in more detail on this sick freak!


APRIL 5, 2022, 7:00 PM ET
Cold Cases
'Sadistic' Indiana Man Gets To 650 Years In Prison For Series Of Cold Case Rapes In 1980s

www.oxygen.com/crime-news/steven-hessler-sentenced-650-years-cold-case-rapes

Steven Ray Hessler received a centuries-long prison sentence after DNA evidence convinced a jury to convict him of 19 felonies related to a string of rapes, beatings and burglaries he committed in the 1980s.

An Indiana man was sentenced to 650 years in prison after DNA collected from a utility bill identified him as the rapist behind a number of sexual assaults carried out more than 30 years ago.

Steven Ray Hessler was convicted on March 3 on 19 separate felony charges relating to a string of rapes and burglaries he carried out over three years in the 1980s, prosecutors said. The charges included two counts of rape, six counts of unlawful deviate conduct, seven counts of burglary resulting in bodily injury, three counts of criminal deviate conduct and one count of robbery.

"Steven Ray Hessler is one of the most evil, dangerous, sadistic predators that I’ve had the pleasure of prosecuting in my 30+ year career," Shelby County Prosecutor Brad Landwerlen said in a statement on April 1. "He derived great pleasure from his unnecessarily brutal methods of terrorizing and sexually torturing his victims."

"I promised the victims early-on that my goal would be that he go to prison the rest of his life," he added. "All involved are very happy that we have achieved that goal."

Between 1982 and 1985, a man now know to be Hessler terrorized Shelby County, Indiana residents. The criminal was known to break into his victims’ homes during the night, armed and wearing a mask. He’d typically threaten, bind and torture his victims, according to officials.

Many of the victims were tied up — though some were not — as he stole cash and other certain items before sexually brutalizing the female victims and often the male victims.

In his last known assault, he raped the woman and pistol-whipped the male victim a number of times, handcuffing and hog-tying him; it left the man in a coma for months. The male victim required speech therapy to learn how to talk again and required two canes to walk. In recent years, however, the man has been confined to a wheelchair.


Hessler, who evaded detection in those cases for decades, also went to great lengths to cover his tracks given the state of forensics at the time, prosecutors stated.

“Hessler was generally very cautious, wiping down the scene and taking items that he had touched with him,” Landwerlen explained.

The attacks reportedly stopped because Hessler was convicted on rape charges in nearby Decatur County in the late 1980s and sentenced to 20 years in prison, Indianapolis Fox affiliate WXIN reported.

Ultimately, DNA that Hessler left at the scene of his last attack implicated him decades later. That forensic evidence — which authorities sent to Virginia-based DNA technology company Parabon NanoLabs — is what linked him to the crimes, officials said.

“Parabon sent back results that caused us to focus on Hessler and one other person,” the Shelby County Prosecuting Attorney added. “Eventually, we were able to obtain Hessler’s DNA sample from an envelope he licked to send in a utility payment, and it matched the DNA from the scene.”

Prosecutors described the subsequent warrant search at Hessler’s home in August 2020 as a “gold mine.” Roughly 30 pairs of women’s panties, individually bagged, were seized from his home, as well as handcuffs and ski masks used in the sexual assaults. Numerous photos taken of two victims during one attack were also found, according to Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR.

Investigators located separate electronic evidence which showed he’d recently been “tracking” and cyberstalking his prior victims, as well.

During his trial, a number of Hessler’s former victims testified against him.

“The biggest credit goes out to the victims, who bravely testified despite having received death threats during the attacks,” Landwerlen said. “These attacks have had profound impacts on their lives — always fearful if someone looks at them, and living in a recurring state of fear. I truly hope these verdicts, and knowing that their attacker will be in prison until he dies, will bring them some sense of closure.”

“It’s difficult to comprehend how much this conviction must mean for the victims and their families," Steven Armentrout, President and CEO for Parabon NanoLabs, told Oxygen.com. "It’s a testament to the perseverance of the Shelby County detectives that they were able to solve this case after so much time and with so little evidence. We are proud that our technology and talented team could help justice be served against this terrible predator.”

Hessler’s involvement over the years had previously been overlooked due to a number of earlier suspects in the case. In 1983, Hessler’s cousin was arrested and charged with some of the early sexual assaults. Another man, Michael Kenyan, who had committed similar attacks in the 1970s, was also a former person of interest. They were both eventually eliminated as suspects.

The Shelby County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office wasn’t immediately available for comment when contacted by Oxygen.com on Tuesday. A spokesperson for the Indiana State Police also didn’t respond to media requests surrounding Hessler’s case this week.

[Jay7777]

Inmate charged with murder 40 years after Georgia slaying

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/inmate-charged-with-murder-40-years-after-georgia-slaying/ar-AAW0SJN?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=dc68d37a6c184b25b2240ba0597fa7ea

CUSSETA, Ga. (AP) — In a case that went unsolved for four decades, a grand jury in Georgia indicted an inmate on murder charges in the 1982 killing of a young Army soldier found fatally shot by a roadside weeks after she was last seen leaving her barracks.

Authorities announced that a grand jury in rural Chattahoochee County near the Georgia-Alabama line indicted 64-year-old Marcellus McCluster, already serving a life sentence for murder in an unrelated case, in the slaying of Rene Dawn Blackmore 40 years ago.

The 20-year-old woman was an Army private stationed at Fort Benning when she vanished in April 1982. Her wallet and sweater were discovered almost a month later beside a road near Cusseta, a few miles from the Army post.

A second month passed before Blackmore's body was found off a logging road a few miles away. Investigators determined she had been killed by a shotgun blast.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds told a news conference Thursday that McCluster had been indicted March 28. He is scheduled to be arraigned in a Chattahoochee County court April 25, the Ledger-Enquirer of Columbus reported.

Blackmore's mother, Donna Reitman, said in a statement that her daughter was a “focused young woman” who "loved laughing and having fun with friends.”

“I have lived these 40 years always feeling the pain her absence causes,” Reitman said. “And believing no one outside of her family and friends even cared. It is with a grateful heart that on March 28, 2022, this belief was shown to be untrue.”

McCluster is charged with felony murder and malice murder in Blackmore's death. He's already serving a life sentence for a murder conviction stemming from an unrelated 1983 slaying in Stewart County. It was not immediately known if McCluster had an attorney representing him.

Reynolds said GBI agents and Army criminal investigators had identified McCluster as a possible suspect within a year after Blackmore was killed, but the initial case stalled.

The investigation gained new life in 2020 after the GBI formed a cold case unit made up of retired agents. Blackmore's killing became the focus of the new unit's initial efforts, Reynolds said.

Jennings White was the original GBI agent assigned to Blackmore's death and he assisted the cold case unit's investigation. He said he never forgot about Blackmore and knew her killing could be solved.

“I’m just so glad that I’m able to see the whole thing turn around,” White said.

[Jay7777]

Advances in DNA research help HPD link suspect to 1994 murder in Waikiki

www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2022/04/15/through-dna-tests-police-link-suspect-1994-murder-waikiki/

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Honolulu police say they now know who killed Lisa Fracassi in 1994.

Thanks to new DNA testing, investigators have concluded that Cecil H. Trent was likely the one responsible for the murder. He was 29 years old at the time of the murder. Fracassi was 37.

Police said Trent died in Honolulu in 2013. He was never arrested for the case, but they believe he was likely the only suspect in the murder.

They used DNA testing along with a closer examination and comparison of fingerprints to solve the case.


“It’s law enforcement saying ‘we have time to go back,’ and let’s look at the DNA in that case and see if there’s some kind of new technology that can be used to make that DNA usable today with today’s technology,” said Debra Allen, a private investigator with 808 Investigations.

Fracassi’s body was found lifeless in her Waikiki apartment along Nahua Street on Nov. 3, 1994. Prior to that, she was last seen in the early morning hours of Oct. 31.

An obituary that ran in the newspaper following her death said she was an exotic dancer at a nightclub, but aspired to be a nurse. Reports at the time indicated she had been strangled to death.

Allen has also worked with companies using DNA evidence to solve cold cases, but was not involved in the Fracassi murder investigation.


Allen said in 1993, law enforcement began storing DNA evidence in a way that avoids contamination.


Honolulu Police said in 2020, DNA and fingerprints in the case were given to Parabon NanoLabs, which specializes in forensic genealogy research. That’s where world-renowned genealogist CeCe Moore — who’s helped police solve dozens of cold cases — identified Trent as the primary suspect in Fracassi’s murder.

Trent’s family said he died at the age of 48 from congestive heart failure.


It’s not just DNA technology that’s helping; it’s also a larger database that’s being made available to law enforcement.

“His relatives at some point uploaded their DNA to a public DNA site called GEDMatch,” said Allen. “From there, they may not even know that he did something.”

Allen said investigators cannot access or use information from private genealogy sites like Ancestry or 23andMe. But that information can be uploaded to GEDMatch.com, and users can opt in to hep crime investigations.

“Could have been adopted or through an affair or however. They may not even know that person. It could be five or six generations away from them, but you’re able to help law enforcement,” said Allen.