A suspect in the 1995 murder of a woman in Kitsap County has been identified via DNA, sheriff’s executives said.
Kitsap County Sheriff John Gese said Wednesday that Douglas Keith Krohne is suspected of killing 61-year-old Patricia Lorraine Barnes, KING-TV reported.
Krohne died in 2016. Gese stated Teas-based lab Othram helped clear up the case after the sheriff’s workplace reopened its investigation in 2018.
Barnes’ body was discovered unclothed and partially protected alongside a rural avenue in Kitsap County in August 1995, in accordance with the sheriff’s office. She had been shot in the head twice.
In 2018, KCSO reopened the investigation and dispatched DNA samples to the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory, as nicely as Othram labs and another personal lab in Florida.
KCSO said Orthram used the DNA proof to search genealogy databases for a viable genetic family of the suspect. In December 2021, Orthram labs provided the name of a potential suspect to KSCO detectives.
Krohne died in an accident in Arizona in 2016, according to KCSO.
The DNA proof linked Krohne to the killing. He matched the 1995 artist rendering of the potential suspect.
Krohne lived in Seattle and Tacoma around the time of the killing and detectives said he had a lengthy criminal history in western Washington, such as criminal convictions and a kidnapping arrest in 1994.
On Dec. 22, 2021, Othram provided a manageable suspect name based on the DNA, which led investigators to Arizona. They worked with investigators in the town of Nogales and the clinical examiner’s workplace in Pima County.
“At this time it was decided that the doubtlessly matching suspect had died of accidental motives in September of 2016,” Grant said.
The Pima County medical examiner’s office provided the sheriff’s office with a pattern retained from the suspect’s autopsy examination on Dec. 29, which was once examined and in contrast to the suspect DNA profile in January this year.
On Feb. 7, the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab demonstrated the DNA matched the suspect DNA profile, identified as Krohne.
“The linchpin for the evidence was a cigarette butt that was once observed at the physique dump location,” Grant told Fox affiliate KCPQ of Seattle.
“The evidence on the body could imply one of two, three exclusive things, however when you have a cigarette butt with the DNA and the DNA on her body and on objects round her body, it was once conclusive to me that we had the right guy,” Grant added.
Grant stated in the information convention stated that Krohne had preceding addresses in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, and would have been 33 years old at the time of the murder.
He additionally had a “significant” criminal record in Washington inclusive of a 1984 conviction for first-degree theft and a 1994 arrest in Pierce County for second-degree kidnapping, Grant said.
However, the investigation confirmed no preceding connection or relationship between Krohne and Barnes.
Barnes’ family used to be informed her case was solved on Monday, with Grant calling the conversation, “emotional.”
DNA lifted from cigarette butts has cracked various bloodless cases, such as the 1985 homicide of Florida mother Tonya Ethridge McKinley and the 1996 homicide of Angie Dodge in Idaho.