Posted on 07/26/2022 8:24:53 AM PDT by bitt
The murder investigation included records of Italian social clubs, draft cards, and Ellis Island immigration logs.
For decades, it seemed that Lindy Sue Biechler’s killer would never be found.
The 19-year-old newlywed’s stabbing death in her Lancaster County apartment in 1975 had stunned her community and shattered her family. As years passed, police kept working the case, slowly eliminating suspects as technology improved.
Detectives on the scene had managed to save a sample of the killer’s DNA. But for decades it had no match in DNA databases of convicted criminals. That’s when CeCe Moore, a genetic genealogist at Parabon Nanolabs, a company that works with police to solve cold cases, decided to dig a little differently.
She and her colleagues in Reston, Va., identified the common ancestors of people who were partial matches to the DNA sample. They were all from a small town in Italy. And through generations and generations of genealogical records, authorities identified a prime suspect.
This week, Heather Adams, the Lancaster County district attorney, announced the arrest of David Sinopli, 68, a Lancaster native whose DNA, authorities say, matched the sample taken from the scene of Biechler’s murder nearly five decades before.
“It was a really good feeling to be able to get to this point,” Adams said. “It’s also just the beginning of the court process.”
(Excerpt) Read more at inquirer.com ...
There used to be a TV show called "Cold Case" that dealt with these kinds of stories. The show was simultaneously interesting, yet sad in many ways for the family.
Sounds like they preserved evidence from 1975 from which DNA could be extracted years later. This jagoff got to live free 47 years after his horrific crime. I’m glad they caught him, since, based on what was written here, he continued to be a pox on society.
Indeed. GEDmatch is a conglomeration of data from direct to consumer (D2C) companies, like Ancestry, 23&me, My Heritage, Family Tree, and others. Once you or any of your relatives are in the system you become traceable.
Probably too late for that, because this can be done with basically shirt-tail relatives you don’t even know. 10th cousins is what they started with!
Makes me think of Romans 13:3; For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.
Of course, bad rulers are a terror to all, which is kind of the point of the law. Bad people choose bad rulers so they can corrupt them and do as they please. Which brings us to where we are now...
Good.
Sinopli must have really pissed someone off, just saying.
No, but biological material was preserved.
shirt tail relatives... i like that...
Its really unfortunate that he got to live a normal life after raping and murdering this woman. He committed the crime at 21 and is only getting caught at 68.
Once again, unless they say otherwise it does not look like he had any extensive criminal record so either he was very clever and repeatedly got away with these kinds of monstrous crimes, or he committed this one heinous act and then lived a normal life. That’s what I find most chilling about a lot of these old cold cases that have been solved with DNA. Its the number of these monsters who did something horrible once and then seemingly just put it away and appeared normal to everybody else for 40 or 50 years.
How is it possible to be so awful and then - like flicking a light switch - just turn it off and live like a regular person? It looks like that’s exactly what several of them somehow do.
They had semem on her panties which might have been enough to get a blood type but that’s all. Useful in eliminating suspects but not convicting someone.
So they saved it for future trails.
What is puzzling to me is that DNA was ‘discovered’ in 1965. Why did it take 30 years or more to finally be used to track people?
There’s a Cold Case channel on Pluto TV...if you can’t get enough!
I don't buy it. They're called "behavior patterns" for a reason.
“The investigator did some pretty impressive research.”
CeCe Moore had a pretty good series on TV a couple years ago. It’s almost magical how she pulls things together.
Its also amazing how often they have gotten the wrong person.
https://daily.jstor.org/forensic-dna-evidence-can-lead-wrongful-convictions/
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/dna-evidence-its-genes-30060.html
http://dnapolicyinitiative.org/police-use-of-dna-mistakes-error-and-fraud/
“They did DNA gathering in 1975?...”
They probably kept genetic material for other reasons, but it turned out to be useful in DNA testing. I think DNA was actually discovered in the late 1800s, but wasn’t tweaked enough to be useful in crimes until the 1980s. Not sure.
“I will NEVER give my DNA up although my nephew did.”
It doesn’t even matter if you do or not. If your nephew did they could find similar results, and then start researching his family through public records. Your DNA doesn’t need to be in a database.
yes... avoiding ancestry.com has to be a family affair or the authorities will be able to identify everyone... eventually... for any crime they deem fits.
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speaking of ancestry.com did I read somewhere that chyna has bought controlling interest in ancestry?
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