'I-65 Killer' who murdered motel clerks identified after 30 years
The identity of the "I-65 Killer" has been revealed, more than 30 years after he sexually assaulted and murdered three women working at motels along the corridor.
On Tuesday, the Indiana State Police announced that the killer has been identified as Harry Edward Greenwell. They say he was behind the 1987 murder of Vicki Heath at the Days Inn in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, as well as the 1989 murders of Margaret "Peggy" Gill at the Days Inn in Merrillville, Indiana, and Jeanne Gilbert at the Days Inn in Remington, Indiana. He also sexually assaulted a woman at the Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana, and left her for dead. She survived and was able to give a description of him to police.
Indiana State Police said Greenwell, who died of cancer in 2013 at age 68, was arrested for the first time in 1963 for armed robbery. His last two arrests were in 1998, for felony drug possession and violating a restraining order. At the time of his death, Greenwell was living in New Albin, Iowa.
The murders were linked by ballistic evidence and DNA analysis, the Indiana State Police said. Law enforcement officials are now using a technique called investigative genealogy to find suspects, which "involves uploading a crime scene DNA profile to one or more genetic genealogy databases in an attempt to identify a criminal offender's genetic relatives and locate the offender within their family tree," the Indiana State Police said. Authorities were able to match Greenwell with a close family member, and it was determined that the probability of Greenwell being the person behind the I-65 murders was more than 99 percent.
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