A Pennsylvania man was nabbed 46 years after a woman was stabbed to death.
Lindy Sue Biechler was killed in 1975, when she was 19-years-old, but the killer had never been found.
But authorities, with the help of a genetic genealogy researcher used DNA from the crime scene to determine that the likely killer’s ancestors were from a town in southern Italy, the researcher, Cece Moore, told reporters Monday.
After scouring century-old records, David Sinopoli, 68, became a person of interest. The authorities in Lancaster County stepped in and investigated further.
“Quite honestly, without that I don’t think that we ever would have solved it,” Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said at a news conference.
Sinopoli was arrested at his home Sunday and charged with criminal homicide, Adams said. He was being held without bail at Lancaster County Prison, according to NBC.
Biechler’s aunt and uncle found her body at her apartment on the night of Dec. 5, 1975.
A knife was sticking out of Biechler’s neck, and investigators later determined that she’d been stabbed 19 times, Adams said.
At the time, dozens of people were cleared in the killing and the case eventually went cold, Adams said.
DNA pulled from semen in her underwear was submitted to a national law enforcement database 1997, but the profile yielded no matches, Adams said.
“There were very few people living in Lancaster that were the right age, gender and had the right family tree,” she said.
Eventually a coffee cup was taken from an airport after Sinopoli threw it out. The DNA matched the DNA found in Biechler’s underwear, Adams said.
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