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DNA On Discarded Napkin Used To Crack 32-Year-Old Murder Case

DNA On Discarded Napkin Used To Crack 32-Year-Old Murder Case

DNA recovered from a restaurant napkin was used by police to catch the killer of a 12-year-old girl who was murdered in 1986.

Mischa Pearlman

Mischa Pearlman

Technology is amazing, isn't it? It's also terrifying a lot of the time, especially when so much of what we do is done online and all our personal information is kept on clouds, which are really just someone else's computers.

But beyond the fact that we're more susceptible to identity theft and fraud than ever before, and the fact we're never really not under the glare of CCTV, and the fact our webcams are probably recording our every movement all the time... technology is bloody amazing.

Unless you're Gary Hartman, that is. That's because last Wednesday, the 66-year-old was arrested and charged with both rape and murder in the first degree of a 12-year-old girl in Tacoma, Washington, in 1986.

More than 20 years after he committed the atrocious crimes, DNA evidence from a discarded restaurant napkin has landed him in police custody. He will be arraigned on Monday and is currently being held in the Pierce County Jail with bail set by a judge at $5 million (£3.7 million).

32 years ago, police say that victim Michella Welch went to Puget Park on 26 March with her two sisters, who she was babysitting. At about 11am, she rode a bicycle home to make lunch while her sisters went to a nearby business to use the restroom.

At around 2pm that day her two sisters noticed her bike at the spot where they were supposed to meet for a picnic, but Michella was nowhere to be seen.

The two girls then notified their regular baby sitter, who contacted the girls' mother, and a search was started after the police were called. Police were called and a search began, before her body was found later that night.

The third cold case to be cracked in recent months using a genealogy website, police solved the case after submitting DNA evidence collected at the scene to a public database. Investigators identified Hartman by matching the DNA on a discarded restaurant napkin to a genetic profile from crime scene evidence.

That's because, in 2016, the police began working with a genetic genealogist, which led to the identification of two brothers as possible suspects by using DNA collected from the scene of Welch's murder to build a family tree using public genealogy databases, pairing it with census data and newspaper obituaries.

Tacoma Police

As a result, on June 5, an investigator followed Hartman to a diner and observed him eating and wiping his face with a napkin which he then threw away into a bag. After Hartman left, the investigator asked an employee who was cleaning the table for the bag.

Police sent the napkin to the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory. On Tuesday, they confirmed that it was a match and the man, who had been working at the Western State Hospital as a community nurse specialist, was arrested the following day during a traffic stop.

Featured Image Credit: HLN

Topics: World News, News, US News, Technology