I-65 killer revealed: Late Iowa man committed string of murders in decades-old cold case, police say

Indiana State Police, together with the FBI, introduced Tuesday {that a} suspect has been recognized by means of “investigative family tree” within the greater than 30-year-old chilly case dubbed the I-65, or Days Inn murders, involving the brutal slayings of three girls working night time shifts at roadside motels. 

Harry Edward Greenwell was named because the suspect within the brutal murders and robberies of Vicki Heath, Margaret “Peggy” Gill and Jeanne Gilbert in a collection of assaults at motels in Kentucky and Indiana within the late ’80s, in addition to a sexual assault on a fourth sufferer left for lifeless however who survived. It was decided that the chance of Greenwell being the particular person liable for the assaults was “99.9999% constructive,” Indiana State Police Sgt. Glen Fifield stated at a press convention Tuesday, delivering the information to the media, with some relations of the victims in attendance. 

Greenwell died in 2013 on the age of 68 in New Albin, Iowa. He had an intensive felony historical past spanning a number of a long time from 1963 to 1998, authorities stated. 

FBI REOPENS MISSOURI COLD CASE MURDER OF 26-YEAR-OLD DIANA AULT 

“Our household is extraordinarily grateful to the entire companies, together with company partnerships, who’ve dedicated to maintaining these unsolved circumstances on the forefront for greater than 33 years, and who’ve labored tirelessly to deliver these circumstances to decision for all who’ve suffered from these crimes,” Kimberly (Gilbert) Wright, the daughter of Jeanne Gilbert, stated in a press release. 

“Whereas this information may shut the circumstances at hand formally, new chapters of therapeutic will start for all of us concerned, and people chapters shall be written in a different way for every of us,” Wright added.  

Authorities defined on Tuesday how one of many many investigative and scientific strategies which have both improved or been created by means of new advances in know-how because the murders was “investigative family tree.” The approach combines the usage of DNA evaluation with conventional family tree analysis and historic data to generate investigative leads for unsolved violent crimes. 

The strategy includes importing a criminal offense scene DNA profile to a number of genetic family tree databases to establish a felony offender’s genetic family and find the offender inside their household tree. By way of this course of, a match was made to Greenwell with a detailed member of the family. 

The state police lab beforehand matched ballistic proof linking the Gill and Gilbert murders. The Heath and Gilbert murders, in addition to the sexual assault of the fourth sufferer, have been linked by means of DNA evaluation. In 2019, the Indiana State Police requested the help of the FBI’s Gang Response Investigative Staff (GRIT).

The case started on February 21, 1987, when 41-year-old Vicki Heath was murdered on the Tremendous 8 Motel in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, whereas assigned to the night time shift on the entrance desk. In keeping with the Unresolved podcast, motel friends described discovering the foyer in disarray the following morning and Heath lacking. Authorities searched the property and located Heath’s physique behind a dumpster. She had been shot and sexually assaulted. 

Two years later, Indiana State Police investigated two homicides that occurred on March 3, 1989. Margaret “Peggy” Gill, 24, was murdered whereas working the night time shift on the Days Inn in Merrillville, Indiana.

In keeping with American Crime Journal, 70 rooms have been booked on the time of her 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. She was final accounted for at 1:30 a.m. when she checked in her final visitor. The motel supervisor reported her lacking later that morning when she didn’t test in, and authorities who searched the motel discovered Gill’s physique on the finish of a vacant corridor raped and shot twice within the head. 

The entrance desk’s money drawer was pressured open and $179 was lacking, police stated. 

Following Gill’s homicide, investigators decided the identical suspect drove some 52 miles south on I-65 to the Days Inn in Remington, Indiana, the place Jeanne Gilbert was working the entrance desk. 

In keeping with the American Crime Journal, Gilbert was working the shift as a favor, so her co-worker might attend her daughter’s highschool cheerleading sectional competitors. 

Gilbert was final accounted for round 4:30 a.m. when she made a courtesy wake-up name to a visitor, and investigators imagine she was later pressured from the motel and right into a automotive. Lower than two hours later, authorities discovered her physique on a county street after having been sexually assaulted and shot thrice. 

A fourth sufferer, whose title was not made public by authorities, was sexually assaulted at a Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana, on Jan. 2, 1990, however managed to outlive. 

She supplied an in depth description of the suspect, saying he was round 6 toes tall with a grey beard and inexperienced eyes, ensuing within the creation of a composite sketch of the I-65 killer. 

“Indiana State Police investigators work diligently day by day, in shut collaboration with our state and federal legislation enforcement companions all throughout Indiana and past our state strains, to assist clear up mindless crimes like this one, regardless of what number of days, months and even years have handed because the crime occurred,” Indiana State Police Superintendent Douglas G. Carter stated Tuesday. 

“These circumstances didn’t go unsolved all these years due to an absence of investigative inactivity – investigators constantly tracked leads throughout the nation and did every thing they might to establish the particular person liable for these crimes,” added FBI Indianapolis Particular Agent in Cost Herbert J. Stapleton. “Now, by means of technological advances and robust, collaborative partnerships we have been in a position to establish this particular person and, hopefully, begin to deliver closure and therapeutic to the households of Vicki, Peggy and Jeanne, in addition to the surviving sufferer.”