A Florida teenager whose skeletal stays had been found tied to a tree in 1974 was identified and should have been the victim of a serial killer, authorities stated.
The stays had been decided to be these of Susan Gale Poole, 15, after a forensic DNA agency developed a profile from her stays and identified possible kinfolk, detective Bill Springer of the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office advised reporters final week.
Springer stated the likeliest suspect was Gerard Schaefer, a former police officer and sheriff’s deputy convicted in 1973 of killing two teenage women within the space the place Poole lived.
Schaefer was implicated within the deaths of greater than two-dozen others, the Associated Press reported. He was fatally stabbed by one other inmate in 1995.
Poole’s household reported her lacking earlier than Christmas in 1972, Springer stated. At the time of her disappearance she was residing in a trailer park together with her household close to Fort Lauderdale and staying with a good friend in Wilton Manors.
Springer stated she had dropped out of highschool and was beforehand reported as a runaway.
Schaefer was identified to decide up hitchhikers — one thing else Poole did — and he was a police officer in Wilton Manors, Springer stated.
“Everything kind of fits that way but I don’t have any physical evidence to link him to it,” he stated.
The teen’s physique was found on a coastal state street in June 1974, roughly a year-and-a-half after she vanished. Her stays had been tied to a mangrove tree with wire, Springer stated.
An anthropologist who examined her found no trauma to her physique, Springer stated.
Earlier efforts to determine her stays, together with including her DNA to a nationwide database in 2015, failed, Springer stated. The forensic DNA agency, Othram, reached out to the sheriff’s workplace and stated it had “great success” figuring out degraded DNA.
Springer now hopes to reconstruct the final weeks of her life by means of pals she could have confided in to doubtlessly link her killing to Schaefer. He offered three names — Julie Hunt, Michelle Williamson and Greg Anderson — and requested that they contact the sheriff’s workplace.