Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,160
- Reaction score
- 7
'81 killing solved by DNA: cops :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State
Twenty-seven years after the body of a deaf teenage girl was found in a Palos Township forest preserve, prosecutors say they have solved her murder -- charging her high school boyfriend, who also can't hear.
Gary Albert, now 45, faces first-degree murder charges for allegedly stabbing Dawn Niles more than 30 times. He appeared at a brief hearing at the Bridgeview courthouse Tuesday morning and was being held on $1 million bond.
He was arrested Sunday.
When Niles disappeared on March 17, 1981, "She had recently learned that she was three months pregnant, and that Gary Albert was the father," said Penny Mateck, a spokeswoman for Sheriff Tom Dart.
'He was the original suspect'
Niles was last seen leaving Hinsdale South High School in Albert's car, Mateck said. At the time, he was an 18-year-old senior, and she was a 15-year-old freshman at the school, which had a number of deaf students, said a law enforcement source. In court Tuesday, Albert, who also can't talk, followed the proceedings through a sign-language interpreter.
Niles' family reported her missing. Six days later, two hikers discovered her body in the Horsetail Lake Forest Preserve, Mateck said.
Suspicions centered around Albert from the start, a law enforcement source said. "He was the original suspect. ... They were boyfriend and girlfriend," the source said.
But Albert's father got him a lawyer early in the investigation, and "we were never able to interview him after the body was found," the source said of the suspect.
Photographs in the pair's west suburban Hinsdale South High School yearbook show the couple together, sitting smiling next to each other in group shots for the school's deaf drama club and chapter of the Junior Illinois Association for the deaf.
Mateck said "advances in technology" allowed sheriff's police to link Albert to the murder. The law enforcement source said DNA from a vaginal swab matched Albert's genetic material.
Officials would not elaborate on other specific evidence of the case.
Albert, of Sugar Grove, works for General Mills, the source said. In 2005, he was convicted of a misdemeanor for unlawful videotaping. He had set up a video camera in his stepdaughter's bathroom, the source said.
Twenty-seven years after the body of a deaf teenage girl was found in a Palos Township forest preserve, prosecutors say they have solved her murder -- charging her high school boyfriend, who also can't hear.
Gary Albert, now 45, faces first-degree murder charges for allegedly stabbing Dawn Niles more than 30 times. He appeared at a brief hearing at the Bridgeview courthouse Tuesday morning and was being held on $1 million bond.
He was arrested Sunday.
When Niles disappeared on March 17, 1981, "She had recently learned that she was three months pregnant, and that Gary Albert was the father," said Penny Mateck, a spokeswoman for Sheriff Tom Dart.
'He was the original suspect'
Niles was last seen leaving Hinsdale South High School in Albert's car, Mateck said. At the time, he was an 18-year-old senior, and she was a 15-year-old freshman at the school, which had a number of deaf students, said a law enforcement source. In court Tuesday, Albert, who also can't talk, followed the proceedings through a sign-language interpreter.
Niles' family reported her missing. Six days later, two hikers discovered her body in the Horsetail Lake Forest Preserve, Mateck said.
Suspicions centered around Albert from the start, a law enforcement source said. "He was the original suspect. ... They were boyfriend and girlfriend," the source said.
But Albert's father got him a lawyer early in the investigation, and "we were never able to interview him after the body was found," the source said of the suspect.
Photographs in the pair's west suburban Hinsdale South High School yearbook show the couple together, sitting smiling next to each other in group shots for the school's deaf drama club and chapter of the Junior Illinois Association for the deaf.
Mateck said "advances in technology" allowed sheriff's police to link Albert to the murder. The law enforcement source said DNA from a vaginal swab matched Albert's genetic material.
Officials would not elaborate on other specific evidence of the case.
Albert, of Sugar Grove, works for General Mills, the source said. In 2005, he was convicted of a misdemeanor for unlawful videotaping. He had set up a video camera in his stepdaughter's bathroom, the source said.
