DNA testing identifies killer of Texas girl in 1979 as man who was executed 20 years ago for a different crime

A man executed greater than twenty years ago has been recognized by DNA testing as the individual who killed a Texas girl in 1979, authorities have introduced.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said Monday it had spent a long time investigating the September 1979 strangulation dying of 12-year-old Lesia Michell Jackson. She went lacking after going swimming in her Conroe neighborhood, and her physique was discovered six days later. An post-mortem concluded she was sexually assaulted earlier than her dying. Conroe is situated about 40 miles north of Houston.

In October, a new forensic expertise referred to as “M-Vac” was used to check proof believed to be on the girl’s clothes, the sheriff’s workplace stated.

In April, forensic scientists with the Texas Department of Public Safety recognized an unknown male DNA profile from the proof and that was despatched to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS database.

The database recognized Gerald Casey of Conroe, and extra testing final week of a blood pattern beforehand obtained from him was a precise DNA match to the proof collected from the girl’s clothes, confirming Casey as her killer, the sheriff’s workplace stated.

When deputies searched for Casey, 47, they came upon that he had been executed in April 2002 for fatally capturing a Montgomery County lady throughout a theft in 1989. KHOU-TV reported that Casey’s confederate in that crime, 36-year-old Carla Smith, testified towards him. Smith was sentenced to 10 years in jail. 

When arrested for homicide, Casey had already been to jail twice for housebreaking.

“The tenacity and diligence in solving this case by a dedicated team is a reminder to our public and to those who commit crimes in our communities that we will never cease our efforts to solve the hardest of cases and bring closure to traumatized families,” the sheriff’s workplace stated in a statement. 

The workplace stated it “will continue to explore future advances in technology that can assist us in solving other cases currently under investigation.”