A 76-year-old man was arrested last Wednesday for the murder of a 15-year-old girl, killed in 1972.
Once again, advances in science and genetic genealogy have enabled the US police to solve an old case. Last Wednesday, Barry Lee Whelpley, a 76-year-old man, was arrested for the murder of a young girl killed in July 1972. Julie Ann Hanson was 15 years old and living in Illinois when she was reported missing. On the day of her disappearance, she had borrowed her brother’s bicycle to go see a baseball game, but she never returned. His body was later found stabbed in several places in a wasteland in Naperville.
For almost 50 years, this crime went unanswered. “This brutal murder has haunted our community,” Naperville Police Chief Robert Marshall said at a press conference Friday. “It was never a cold case … we have always continued to investigate”, he added, quoted by ABC News. “We pursued many leads, identified suspects, eliminated them following our research,” he continued.
The man found thanks to his DNA
Ultimately, it was the sending of the previously unknown DNA found at the scene of the crime to one of the genetic genealogy websites available in the United States that pushed the investigation forward. The police have indeed found a match between this DNA and another found in this giant database. Chief Robert Marshall did not specify which member of the suspect’s family this DNA belonged to. He simply explained that he had made it possible to confirm the identity of Barry Lee Whelpley, who was 27 years old at the time of the facts and lived very close to the house of the victim. The man now lives in Minnesota where he was incarcerated and charged with first degree murder. He is expected to be extradited to Illinois soon.
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