DALLAS (Washington Insider Magazine) – Prosecutors claimed they used the same DNA technique used to nab California’s infamous “Golden State Killer” to apprehend a suspect in the 38-year-old cold case killing of a woman in Dallas.
According to Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, Edward Morgan, 60, was arrested on Friday and is charged with capital murder in the killing of Mary Jane Thompson.
Thompson, 21, was last seen on February 11, 1984, when she boarded a bus to a medical facility that was closed, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Thompson’s body was discovered behind a warehouse 2 days later. According to the Morning News, she was strangled to death by her own leg warmers. According to the DA’s office, Thompson was also sexually abused.
In 2009, the case was reopened, and DNA samples from her autopsy revealed DNA from a likely male suspect, according to authorities. However, no precise matches were discovered, and the case was closed.
In 2018, Noe Camacho, a Dallas Police Department cold-case homicide officer, revived the case with a focus on modern technology and tactics, such as ancestry databases. If a criminal’s DNA isn’t in the FBI’s record, DNA from other sources, such as a genealogy website, can assist detectives to narrow down likely relatives.
Investigators aren’t revealing how they came to concentrate on Morgan, but they said the case was sent for forensic genetic genealogy study in 2020, and Morgan was named as a suspect in Thompson’s killing.
The DA’s office claimed that further DNA testing for Morgan verified a match last week with male DNA swabbed at Thompson’s postmortem in 1984.
It’s unclear if detectives suspected Morgan even before DNA directed them in his direction. Officials from the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office did not reply to a request for comment right away.
According to the DA’s office, forensic genetic genealogy analysis was applied to identify Joseph DeAngelo, called the “Golden State Killer.”
Investigators followed DeAngelo, now 76, and gathered DNA from discarded tissue, which they connected to a double homicide in Ventura County in 1980 and an unnamed relative. For 13 homicides and 13 rape-related offenses, he is receiving a life sentence without the possibility of release.
