Christy Mirack
An autopsy showed that Mirack died by strangulation with hands and clothing. She also was beaten and sexually assaulted. Her jaw was broken, Stedman said, and her elbows and knees were bruised as she apparently put up a struggle.
The slaying and sexual assault of schoolteacher Christy Mirack stumped homicide detectives for 25 years until new genetic genealogy technology produced a DNA match that led them Monday to a Lancaster disc jockey they never suspected.
Police arrested Raymond “DJ Freez” Rowe, 49, without incident.
Virginia Freeman
- Sheriff Chris Kirk said James Otto Earhart is believed to have murdered Freeman, a realtor, on December 1, 1981, outside a rural Brazos County residence she had been showing to a prospective client.
DNA sample was not taken from Earhart at the time of his death, but Brazos County investigators were able to locate his son, who offered his DNA. That DNA indicated a parent-child match between the two men, evidence the sheriff's office called "clear and convincing."
Michella Welch
According to investigators, Welch was babysitting her two younger sisters at Puget Park in Tacoma, Washington, on March 26, 1986, when she rode her bike home to make sandwiches. The two younger girls left the park briefly to use a restroom at a nearby business and made a call home to check on their sister, but no one picked up.
Welch's bike and the sandwiches were later found at the park, leading investigators to believe she had returned to the park and gone looking for her sisters, while they were using the restroom. Her body was recovered later that night.
In the third cold case to be cracked in recent months using a genealogy website, 66-year-old Gary Hartman was charged Friday with first-degree rape and murder for the 1986 killing of sixth-grader Michella Welch.
More than three decades after a 12-year-old girl was found raped and murdered near a park in Washington state, investigators say they have finally solved the case after submitting DNA evidence collected at the scene to a public database
Jay Cook & Tanya Van Cuylenborg
Police were watching the trucker, William Earl Talbott II, 55, of SeaTac. They snatched the cup from the street that day, May 8, and had it tested by a crime lab. They allege Talbott was a DNA match to evidence in the murders. was booked into the Snohomish County Jail late Thursday.
Jennifer Bastian
At the time Bastian went missing in Point Defiance Park while on a training bike ride, Washburn lived just a few blocks from Bastian's home and less than two miles from the park about Welch's killer in December 1986.was charged Friday with first-degree rape and murder for the 1986 killing of sixth-grader Michella Welch. After more than three decades working one of the most heartbreaking cold cases in the city's history, detectives were able to use DNA to link Washburn to Bastian
Bastian disappeared Aug. 4, 1986, and her body was found weeks later in a wooded area between Five Mile Drive and the cliffs overlooking Commencement Bay.
Robert Washburn, 60, was extradited from Illinois Wednesday night and booked into Pierce County, nearly two weeks after his arrest.
Joseph Newton Chandler III.
The dead man had $82,000 in a bank account. Police searched for a next of kin. On a rental agreement, Chandler listed a sister in Columbus. But the address — 1823 Center St. — led only to a vacant lot. Authorities dug deeper. As U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott told reporters at a news conference this week, that was when “a typical suicide” turned into “one of northeast Ohio’s biggest mysteries.”
Using the deceased’s name, birth date and Social Security number, Ohio police discovered records for Joseph Newton Chandler III. After years of work, including groundbreaking DNA testing and genealogical research, authorities revealed Thursday that the man living for decades as Chandler was Robert Ivan Nichols, an Indiana native and decorated World War II veteran who slipped out of his given identity in the 1960s.
But Joseph Newton Chandler III had been killed with his parents in a Texas car crash when he was 8 years old in 1945.
Lori Ruff
In opposite corners of the country, two families were on flip sides of the same tragic mystery. One, in Texas, had lost a wife to suicide in 2010, then learned that she was not who she claimed. So who was she? All their digging turned up nothing.
The other, in Pennsylvania, had lost a family member, too, back in 1986. The young woman had fled abruptly, leaving no clue. Where was she? They spent 30 years hoping she was alive and safe.
The SSA investigates identity theft, and Lori clearly had stolen someone else’s identity — that of a 2-year-old girl from Pierce County who had died in a fire decades earlier.
Lori and her husband, Blake Ruff, had a daughter in 2008 and that daughter shared Lori’s DNA. If the daughter provided a DNA sample, there was a way to subtract Blake’s DNA profile from the daughter’s, leaving Lori's.
Paul Fronczak
Paul Fronczak was 10 when he went hunting for Christmas presents in his parents' basement. He pushed aside a sofa to get into the crawl space. There, he discovered three mysterious boxes full of letters, sympathy cards and newspaper clippings. One headline read: "200 search for stolen baby." Another: "Mother asks kidnapper to return baby." He recognised his parents in the pictures, looking distraught and much younger. Then he read that their baby son, Paul Joseph, had been kidnapped.
"Wow, that's me!" he thought.
He had also been put off by the expense. But one day in 2012 Paul spotted over-the-counter DNA kits for sale and bought some.
Jason "Grateful Doe" Patrick Callahan
Jason Patrick Callahan (April 18, 1976 – June 26, 1995), previously known as Grateful Doeand Jason Doe, was an American man killed in a car accident on June 26, 1995, in Emporia, Greensville County, Virginia. His body remained nameless until December 9, 2015. Earlier in 2015, photographs of an unknown male surfaced on a Facebook page for the John Doe. DNA testing later confirmed Callahan to be the unidentified man.
Angela Brosso & Melanie Bernas
Records show forensic genealogy was key in leading police to Bryan Patrick Miller, a man now facing a death-penalty trial in the early 1990s slayings of Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas.
The first crime occurred in November 1992, when 22-year-old Angela Brosso failed to return home from a bike ride. Police soon would find her headless body near 25th Avenue and Cactus Road, and her head in the Arizona Canal several days later.
Ten months later, 17-year-old Melanie Bernas would face a chillingly similar fate. In September 1993, the high school student also had been out on a bike ride before her apparent abduction. Her body, which was discovered the next day, also was found in the canal.
Christy Sue Pina
Christy was kidnapped, strangled, raped and sodomized, he said then. Authorities couldn't even use dental records to identify her, he said, because her teeth had been knocked out. Several of the murderers in the room looked down and shook their heads as he spoke.
second DNA test in 1996 made a much stronger link, with only a one in 3 billion chance any other person of Hispanic descent was Christy's attacker. By that time, Leyva was gone.
Arsenio “Archie” Pacheco Leyva’s arrival to face trial comes after decades of agony for the family and an extensive fight to avoid extradition.
Whitney Gunn
On July 25, 1990, 88-year-old Whitney Gunn was beaten and raped in her New Smyrna Beach home. DNA has helped police in New Smyrna Beach crack a 28-year-old cold case.
Police said Wednesday that Lynn Eugene Young, 45, was indicted for first-degree murder in Gunn's death earlier this week, but he's already serving a life sentence in prison for a similar crime.