Suspect in 1972 murder kills himself; jury finds him guilty

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Suspect in 1972 murder kills himself; jury finds him guilty

Terrence Miller, 78, apparently took his own life as jurors in his cold-case murder trial were reaching a verdict.

By Caleb Hutton
Monday, November 9, 2020 5:43pm

EVERETT — An Edmonds man on trial for the 1972 killing of Jody Loomis died in an apparent suicide Monday morning. ... Hours later, a jury found Terrence Miller, 78, guilty of first-degree murder, despite of a defense motion to dismiss the case due to the defendant’s death. ... After two weeks of testimony, Miller was convicted of shooting Loomis, 20, when she was on a bike ride to see her horse, Saudi, in south Snohomish County.

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At the center of the trial was DNA in the form of semen recovered from a boot worn by Loomis on Aug. 23, 1972. The tiny stain went unnoticed — by the county coroner’s office, sheriff’s detectives and the FBI — until a state crime lab technician discovered it in 2008 as part of a renewed effort by the sheriff’s cold case team to solve the crime. ... A somewhat degraded genetic profile was analyzed and used to rule out potential male suspects.

Then in 2018, at the request of Snohomish County sheriff’s detective Scharf, the private forensic experts at Parabon Nanolabs extracted a genetic profile that could be uploaded to public ancestry websites, the first step in an investigative technique known as forensic genealogy. An Oregon genealogist, Deb Stone, built the suspect’s family tree based on the DNA, looking for a spot where the limbs intersected. It’s the same forensic tool police in California used to track down a suspect in the Golden State Killer case.

https://2qibqm39xjt6q46gf1rwo2g1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/[e-mail]

Jody Loomis with her horse in 1972. (Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office)

The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office has pioneered use of the technique, too, leading to breakthroughs in at least three long-unsolved cold case homicides. ... The Loomis case was easily the oldest of the three — and it might be the oldest such case in the world, so far, to see a conviction. A handful of older cold cases have been cracked around the country with the help of forensic genealogy. In almost all of those, however, the suspect has been long dead.

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[stopdiggin]

1. interesting

where DNA is taking us in science ....
stunning!
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[marble falls]

2. bad link.