Having lived just outside Tacoma, Washington during the period, I remember well the discovery of Michella Welch’s body in March of 1986. The case has been dead-cold for years – until using data from an online database – and matching sites, they have the perp behind bars. Following is a teaser from the Tacoma News Tribune.
It was DNA, a genealogist and perseverance that zeroed in on Michella Welch’s suspected killer after 32 years.
On Friday, Pierce County prosecutors charged Gary Charles Hartman, 66, with first-degree murder and first-degree rape….
After more than three decades of working the Welch cold case, police in May called on a genetic genealogist to help.
The genealogist used the suspect’s DNA sample to build a family tree using public websites, then ran it through a public database and received “a significant match,” according to charging papers.
That process led to Hartman and his younger brother, who both lived in the North End at the time Welch was killed in Puget Park.
Lab technicians and the genealogist told Tacoma police they believed one of the Hartman brothers killed the girl and recommended obtaining DNA samples from them to compare to the DNA sample from the crime scene.
Detectives began running surveillance on the Hartman brothers in early June, court records show.
Read the full article at: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/crime/article213651959.html
