Many women were assassinated or sexually abused in a string of incidents at hotels along the Interstate 65 corridor in Kentucky and Indiana in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Vicki Heath was first discovered dead in 1987 in a Super 8 Motel in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Two years later, Margaret "Peggy" Gill and Jeanne Gilbert were murdered in separate Days Inn sites in Indiana. Then, in early 1990, at the Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana, Jane Doe was sexually attacked.
These attacks were unsolved for decades as detectives tried to piece together what information they had in order to identify a perpetrator.
The culprit behind the "I-65" or "Days Inn" cold case murders has been named Harry Edward Greenwell, who died in 2013, according to Indiana State Police, who noted in a news release that he had an extensive criminal history extending from 1963 to 1998.
"I hope that today brings a little bit of peace to the family members who are here," ISP Superintendent Douglas Carter said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Greenwell was identified through a procedure known as investigative genealogy, which entails uploading crime-scene DNA to genealogical databases in order to uncover any genetic relations and track down the perpetrator through their family tree.
In other cold cases, such as the Golden State Killer case, similar tactics have been utilized to identify perpetrators.
According to ISP spokesperson Sgt. Glen Fifield, all four victims were assaulted while doing night shifts at their various hotels in the I-65 case.
Authorities gathered evidence during the inquiry, including ballistic evidence connecting the Gill and Gilbert murders, according to Fifield. DNA evidence tying the Heath and Gilbert killings to the Columbus investigation was later matched by the ISP laboratory.
The Columbus victim, the killer's only confirmed surviving victim, was able to offer investigators an adequate physical description of the perpetrator and the crime following the attack, according to Fifield.
The ISP lab, with the support of the FBI's Gang Response Investigative Group, recently examined crime scene samples that authorities believe matched Greenwell's DNA with a close family relative, citing recent technological improvements.
Greenwell was identified as a suspect as a result of this match, according to Fifield. He stated that the correlation was 99.9999% positive.
Kim Gilbert Wright, Jeanne Gilbert's daughter, commended the law police for their efforts at a press conference, stating her family was very thankful for their dedication to solving the case.
She did admit, though, that justice and healing will look different for each person involved.
