Transcript for Popular DJ pleads guilty after DNA helps crack cold case
We are back with a new cold case solved with the help of a genealogy database. DNA from a man’s half-sister linked him to a murder decades later and he’s just been sentenced now to life in prison. ABC’s whit Johnson has been covering the case for us and has all the details. Reporter: Good morning. This case went cold like so many others. Investigators lifting DNA evidence from the crime scene but unable to link it to a suspect. 2 1/2 decades later a match and stunning confession. Part of a new wave of crime solving. New cutting edge technology, now heating up the coldest of cases. Police in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, making a stunning arrest in a 39-year-old murder mystery. 64-year-old Jerry Lynn burns accused of killing 18-year-old Michelle mar tinco and Joseph James Deangelo named as the golden state killer who terrorized the state in the ’70s and ’80s with a string of killings and sexual assaults. Charged with 13 murders. Now this morning investigators say they cracked another cold case, all using the same technology plugging crime scene DNA into a genealogy database. It went back to his life as he had done nothing wrong. Raymond Rowe pleading guilty for killing Christy mirack. Telling the court and victim’s family, I’m sorry, I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I apologize. Rowe identified after authorities matched his DNA with his half-sister who submitted hers to a genealogy website. Rowe now 50 years old will spend the rest of his life in jail without the possibility of parole. The case stunning the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, community. Mirack was found dead in her apartment strangled and sexually assaulted. DNA collected at the scene but the case went cold for decades. Then police taking that fresh lead, able to gather new DNA evidence from Rowe an a water bottle and a piece of gum he used after a gig at an elementary school making the arrest last June. Now, millions of people are now taking these DNA tests. Prosecutors agreed to drop the death penalty as part of a plea deal and that confession. Rowe and mirack lived and worked a few miles apart. This morning it is still unclear what the motive was for this brutal attack. Thank goodness it has been solved. Come up, the Colorado couple trapped in their car by not one
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