Dobbeltdrabet of Linda and Clifford Bernhardt in 1973, had for years a top priority at the police in Billings, the UNITED states, but a breakthrough in the case had to wait for.
Throughout the 45 years would pass before new dna technology led police to be able to put the name of the man suspected to have strangled the young married couple.
The alleged perpetrator, Cecil Stan Caldwell, at the time, even died. He was, at the time of the colleague of the female victim, writes the Associated Press.
Subject to the dobbeltdrabet is unknown, but local police suspect that Linda Bernhardt was the goal. She had been bound and sexmisbrugt prior to the killing.
– There are a lot of theories, but I don’t think we’ll get a definitive answer, says the policeman Vince Wallis at a press conference Monday.
Cecil Stan Caldwell was not already known by the police, and he died in 2003 at the age of 59 years.
Clifford Bernhardt was the soil and concreting and Vietnamveteran, while Linda Bernhardt worked at a warehouse. The couple had been married for several years and was just moved into the house where they were killed.
Police conducted hundreds of interviews and got even the help of a clairvoyant, but the result did not materialize.
It was the modern technology which gave the long-awaited breakthrough.
Dna-traces from the perpetrator gave no match in the police database. But the perpetrator’s dna found a partial match in a database, in which people voluntarily delegate their dna in conjunction with genealogy.
Thus could the police zoom in on Cecil Stan Caldwell.
The so-called familial dna technology has in recent years helped to unravel a long series of old cases, including over a dozen killings, linked to seriemorderen the Golden State Killer.
