The murder case of a Wisconsin hitchhiker was solved 50 years later thanks to a DNA discovery from evidence taken from a hat the accused killer left at the scene.
Jon Keith Miller, 84, was arrested Thursday after “confirming his involvement” in the stabbing of Mary Schlais, whose body was found at a Spring Brook intersection in February 1974.
Schlais, just 25, was hitchhiking to a Chicago art show when she was found dead that cold morning, and investigators had few leads beyond an element of possible evidence – a cap found near her body, from which some hairs were discovered. fired.
But for 50 years, police couldn’t do much with them until the Dunn County Sheriff’s Office partnered with the genetic genealogy department at Ramapo College in New Jersey, CBS News reported.
Investigators were able to use the hair to create a genetic profile and, from there, identify potential relatives.
This process led to Miller’s daughter, who then positively connected the hair’s DNA to him.
When police questioned Miller, who now lives in Minnesota, on Thursday, he initially denied any knowledge of the killing — but once presented with DNA evidence, he confessed.
The grizzled octogenarian said he saw Schlais hitchhiking on the side of the road that night and picked her up, according to the criminal complaint following his arrest cited by CBS News.
After driving away, he started asking her for ‘sexual contact’ – but when she refused, he pulled out a knife and started stabbing her in the back, cutting her as she tried to defend herself , according to the complaint.
He then stopped and began to hide her body in a snowbank, but when a car drove by, he panicked and took off, leaving behind the hat that would implicate him five decades later.
“When he walked by, the guy was just looking at him. He said he would never forget the look on her face,” said Mary Dodge, whose neighbor Denny Anderson was the man who drove by and scared Miller away, CBS News reported.
Police said Miller was “pretty calm about what happened” when he confessed.
“I think it must even be a relief for him after 50 years of living with this. It must have been on his mind almost every day,” Dunn County Sheriff Kevin Bygd told reporters Friday, according to CNN.
“You would think that anyone with a conscience would do it. So, I think he was done fighting, personally.
Bygd called the arrest “a big victory for our agency,” explaining how decades of officers assigned to the cold case routinely came up empty-handed — and that without the help of Ramapo College, it might have remained the case.
“Agencies can spend thousands and thousands of dollars sending DNA samples to private labs across the country to try to get results, and we had a college that was more than willing to step in and help us in this process,” he said.
Before Miller became involved, for years the main suspect in Schlais’ murder was Randall Woodfield – who was briefly a member of the Green Bay Packers, but was later sent to prison for murder. He is suspected of being the “I-5 Killer”, who claimed numerous victims during the 1980s.
