Sergeant Kadner said the crucial piece of evidence was a DNA sample from a sperm cell that had been collected from Ms.

“That’s when we really started looking at what evidence we had, and if we could potentially do the same thing,” Sergeant Kadner said. It was the first high-profile case to be cracked with genetic genealogy. Investigators turned to genetic genealogy in 2018, after the authorities arrested Joseph James DeAngelo, known as the Golden State Killer, and accused him of committing 13 murders and nearly 50 rapes that terrorized California in the 1970s and ’80s. Bulger, who died in 2018, had lived in Great Falls in the 1950s and had been arrested in a rape there in 1951, Sergeant Kadner said.īut no one was ever charged, and the case went cold. Over the next half century, detectives investigated about 35 potential suspects, including James (Whitey) Bulger, the notorious South Boston mobster who was convicted in 2013 of participating in 11 murders. Newspaper headlines described the teenagers as “lovers’ lane slaying victims” and recalled a “wide search” for a “brutal killer.” She had been shot in the head and had injuries that were consistent with a struggle or a sexual assault, Sergeant Kadner said. 4, 1956, a county road worker found her body off a gravel road about five miles north of Great Falls. Kalitzke had been kidnapped.īut the next day, Jan.

The ignition switch, radio and headlights on his car were on, and the car was in gear. His hands had been tied behind his back with his own belt. He was face down, and had been shot in the back of the head. Bogle’s body in an area that was known as a rendezvous spot for teenagers.

The following day, three boys hiking along the Sun River in Great Falls found Mr. When they didn’t come home that night, their families assumed they had eloped, Sergeant Kadner said. The teenagers were last seen at Pete’s Drive-In restaurant in Great Falls, just after 9 p.m. They both loved dancing and music, and he was “instantly smitten with Patty” when they met in December 1955, Sergeant Kadner said. Bogle was an airman from Waco, Texas, stationed nearby at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Kalitzke was a junior at Great Falls High School. The investigation involved painstaking research into a long-ago crime that had once generated national media attention. Butler, an expert on forensic genetics at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said while he was not aware of any group that officially tracks cold cases, “Certainly, 1956 is the oldest that I have heard about up to this point.”

Sergeant Kadner said he believed it was the oldest homicide case in the United States to be solved with genetic genealogy, which uses DNA from crime scenes to identify the relatives of potential suspects and eventually the suspects themselves.

Cum shot 5 year old