Tests on DNA taken last year from the exhumed body of a man in Alabama have solved the 1992 slaying of a woman whose body was found burned in a fire in an abandoned building in central Massachusetts.
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Tests on DNA taken last year from the exhumed body of a man in Alabama have solved the 1992 slaying of a woman whose body was found burned in a fire in an abandoned building in central Massachusetts, prosecutors said Wednesday.
An analysis of tissue recovered from the exhumed remains of James Earl Johnson showed that his DNA was a match for the sample recovered from the autopsy of 30-year-old Denise Comeau and DNA profiles in two other rape cases from the 1990s, Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early said.
"The match means that Mr. Johnson was responsible for killing Ms. Comeau and for a rape in May 1993 and a rape in September of 1995," Early said in a statement.
The rape victims have died.
"We hope that this development can give some closure to the victims' families," Early said.
Firefighters battling a blaze in an abandoned building in Worcester in 1992 found Comeau's body. An autopsy showed that she was strangled before the fire burned her body.
Investigators later compared DNA recovered from her body with samples from rapes in the 1990s. Johnson was identified as a suspect in one of the cases, but he was never charged "because the victim did not wish to go forward with a charge," Early said.
Johnson lived in Worcester, one of New England's biggest cities, from the 1970s to the '90s. He died at age 58 in 2008, about a year after a Worcester County grand jury indicted the unidentified person whose DNA was linked to the rapes. His body was exhumed from a cemetery near Tuskegee, Ala., for DNA testing last October.