- Dallas police this week arrested a 60-year-old man in connection to a 38-year-old cold murder case.
- Mary Jane Thompson, 21, was found dead in Dallas in 1984.
- Police solved the case using forensic genetic genealogy analysis with DNA taken during her autopsy.
Police in Texas arrested a man in a 38-year-old cold murder case with help from the same DNA technology that was used to identify California's notorious "Golden State Killer."
Edward Morgan, 60, was arrested Friday and charged with capital murder related to the death of Mary Jane Thompson, the Dallas County District Attorney said in a statement. Thompson, who was 21, was found behind a warehouse in Dallas on February 13, 1984, having been sexually assaulted and murdered.
The Dallas Police Department reopened the case in 2009 and conducted DNA testing using samples collected during her autopsy. DNA belonging to a man was identified but could not be matched to a specific person and the case again went cold.
The case was reopened in 2018 to try new types of testing, with the FBI joining the investigation in 2020, and was submitted for forensic genetic genealogy analysis, the same testing used to identify Joseph DeAngelo, also known as the Golden State Killer. DeAngelo pleaded guilty in 2020 to a string of rapes and murders dating back to the 1970s and was sentenced to life in prison.
Such testing typically involves comparing DNA samples to ancestry or genealogy databases when a match doesn't appear in the FBI's system.
Officials did not say how exactly Morgan was identified as a suspect, but additional DNA testing this week confirmed he was a match for the DNA collected during Thompson's autopsy, the district attorney's office said.
In a statement, Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Leighton D'Antoni praised the multiple law enforcement agencies who worked on cracking Thompson's case.
"Working together, we continue to solve the most difficult cold cases that Dallas has ever seen," he said.