A drop of blood led to the arrest of a
New York man who is suspected of killing his former in-laws more than 30 years
ago.
Michael Anthony Louise, 79, was taken
into custody Thursday at his home in Syracuse on an arrest warrant for two
counts of second-degree murder.
He is accused of killing George
Peacock, 76, and Catherine Peacock, 73, at their Danby, Vermont, home on Sept.
17, 1989, Vermont State Police announced in a news release. The couple had been
stabbed multiple times. Their bodies were discovered by a neighbor, police
said.
There were no signs of forced entry
into the house and no important items had been removed, according to
authorities. Louise, who was married to one of the Peacock's daughters, had
been identified as a potential suspect about two weeks after the killings but
investigators could not "establish a conclusive link" tying him to
the crime, the release states.
The killings went unsolved until, in
May 2020, forensic testing "confirmed a DNA match to George Peacock in a
spot of blood found inside Louise’s car in October 1989," police said.
"The blood sample had been tested
previously during the investigation, as DNA testing technology was emerging,
and that earlier test had been inconclusive," police said in the release.
Louise is being held at the Onondaga
County Justice Center until he is extradited to Vermont. It's not clear if he
has obtained an attorney.
Advancements in DNA testing have been
used to help law enforcement solve a slew of cold cases. Last month, a Missouri
inmate serving a life sentence for killing a man was linked to the deaths of
four women who vanished in 1990 and 1991 after crime lab technicians found DNA
from a small amount of viable evidence that had been collected.
The suspect, Gary Muehlberg, 73, was
charged with four counts of first-degree murder in connection to the deaths
of Robyn Mihan, Brenda Pruitt, Donna
Reitmeyer and Sandra Little.
In Pennsylvania, authorities were also
able to crack the 1988 strangulation death of a mother after breakthrough
genetic genealogy technology linked DNA from the victim's clothing to a
saliva-sealed anonymous letter that was written to a local newspaper about two
years after the killing. The DNA matched a man named Scott Grim, however, he
died in 2018 of natural causes at age 58.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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