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DNA leads to arrest in murder of a New York teenager 35 years ago

WION Web Team
New York, New York, United States of AmericaUpdated: Sep 12, 2020, 09:09 PM IST
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Representative image Photograph:(Reuters)

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A 14-year old was raped and killed while delivering a birthday card in her neighborhood on Thanksgiving Day 1984 and her body was found by a pedestrian near a school dumpster that night with signs of trauma.

A man was arrested on charges of a murder that happened 35 years ago in Rochester, New York, and DNA testing had a major role to play in it.

A 14-year old was raped and killed while delivering a birthday card in her neighborhood on Thanksgiving Day 1984 and her body was found by a pedestrian near a school dumpster that night with signs of trauma.

Timothy Williams, 56, was arrested at his home in Melbourne, Florida, on Wednesday and arraigned as a fugitive, according to Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Julie Hahn.

The DNA was extracted from semen collected during an autopsy, and was uploaded to the FBI's DNA database in 1999.

In 2017, New York law was changed to allow law enforcement to search for familial matches to DNA collected in criminal investigations, and the department requested to have a familial DNA search conducted to see if there was a match with the extracted DNA or anyone that might be related.

In July 2020, familial search results from the New York state crime lab generated new leads.

Williams had no defense attorney in Florida, where he waived extradition in Florida. He now awaits extradition to New York.

The victim's mother thanked the police department for the lengths it went to solve the case.