Police in Snohomish County, Wash., have solved a 47-year-old cold case murder using DNA from a discarded coffee cup.
On Wednesday, detectives arrested a 77-year-old man for the rape and murder of Jody Loomis, a young woman who was killed in 1972 in a wooded area about 16 kilometres south of Everett, Wash.
Police allege Terrence Miller attacked the 20-year-old as she was riding her bike to a horse stable and dragged her into a nearby woods, where he ultimately shot her in the head.
According to K5 News, detectives found a semen sample at the crime scene, which they sent to a lab to be analyzed in 2008 but did not find a match.
In July 2018, investigators sent that same sample to another lab, which identified possible relatives of the suspect. Working with a genealogist, they were able to identify Miller as a potential suspect.
Investigators trailed the 77-year-old to a casino, where they recovered a coffee cup he’d thrown out. They were able to match DNA from that coffee cup to the semen sample from the murder scene.
Miller’s arrest is the second time Snohomish County investigators have used genealogical DNA tracking to solve a cold case.
In June 2018, a Washington State trucker was linked to the deaths of a Vancouver Island couple, 18-year-old Tanya Van Cuylenborg and 20-year-old Jay Cook, who were killed while on a visit to Seattle, Wash., in 1987. He was caught after DNA from a cup that fell from his truck was uploaded to a public genealogy database.
Miller has been charged with first-degree murder in connection to Loomis’ death. He also has a prior arrest for indecent exposure to a young girl and is accused of molesting several family members, though no charges were ever filed.