Hallandale Beach police say they are just one tip away from solving the murder case of a Toronto couple killed three years ago following the release of a composite sketch on Thursday.
Police Chief Dwayne Flournoy said they were able to use a new process called DNA phenotyping from evidence collected at the crime scene to produce the image.
“We provided them with profiles from our cases and asked them to do some ancestry analysis of that and they produced a report and provided that to us,” explained Flournoy at a press conference on Thursday.
The bodies of David Pichosky, 71, and Rochelle Wise, 66, were discovered in their Florida condo on Jan. 10, 2013.
Autopsies concluded the deaths were homicide by asphyxiation, although police haven’t specified whether it was by hand or a ligature.
Police said in 2014 that DNA evidence collected at the crime scene suggested at least two female suspects were involved in the murder.
WATCH: Florida police suspect two women in 2013 killing of Toronto couple
Flournoy said the DNA testing company was only able to produce one image as the evidence wasn’t sufficient for the other.
Police say the suspect in the composite sketch is described as a white female with a southeast European background from the Slavic regions such as Kosovo and Bosnia.
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She has brown or black hair, with brown or hazel eyes and with a light or olive skin complexion.
Flournoy said the suspect in the sketch closely resembles the image of a woman who was caught on video walking to the rear of the Toronto couple’s home a day prior to the murder.
Investigators said the slayings may have been motivated by robbery as Wise’s wedding ring, valued at $16,000, was missing from the couple’s condo.
Police say they haven’t had any concrete leads in the case for over a year and are appealing for information from the public on the case.
“We have no suspects. We have a great deal of DNA evidence that we’ve put in all the available databases. We’re constantly running it in the Canadian and international databases, including Interpol,” said Flournoy.
WATCH: Florida police plead for public’s help in solving 2013 murder of Toronto couple
“Either the perpetrators or the owners of DNA, they have not been arrested, they’ve never been arrested and they’re not in any database.”
A monetary reward for information on the case has since been reduced from $57,000 to $3,000.
“We have a great deal of information and evidence, we’re just missing one tip,” Flournoy said. “We’re just one tip, one lead away from solving this case.”
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