genetic genealogy on websleuths JonBenet

19-year old Mesa College student Deborah Tomlinson was murdered inside her Grand Junction apartment just after Christmas in 1975. Now, nearly a half-century later, the case has been solved.

The Grand Junction Police Department has identified Jimmie Dean Duncan, born in April 1949, as Tomlinson’s murderer. Detectives got their breakthrough with the help of a DNA analysis lab based in Virginia, called Parabon NanoLabs.

Duncan died of unknown causes in 1987. He was 26 years old at the time of Tomlinson’s murder. The Grand Junction Police Department is still investigating a potential motive for the killing, though Duncan did have a criminal history. He had previously been involved in a robbery and a separate shooting in Florida.

The discovery gives Tomlinson’s family some long-awaited closure.

“I’m really glad to hear they finally got it done,” says Jim Tomlinson, Deborah’s father. “I called the rest of the family and told them. Everyone was glad to hear that the case is closed.”

Detective Sergeant Sean Crocker says the new revelation would have been impossible if not for the coordination with previous detectives at the police department. He also credited Parabon NanoLabs for helping find crucial evidence to identify the murderer.

“Using all types of genetic genealogy, they arrived at a suspect,” explains Crocker. “After speaking with his family members, we were able to determine without a doubt that Duncan was our only suspect, and he’s the one that committed the murder of Deborah Tomlinson.”

Duncan was not originally a suspect when the killing occurred in 1975. The investigation had been re-opened by detectives in March 2019, and now, it is finally considered a closed case.

uspect in 1972 Murder Dies in Apparent Suicide Hours Before Conviction

A man who eluded homicide investigators in Washington state for nearly 50 years — until a DNA match on a coffee cup cracked the cold case — died in an apparent suicide Monday just hours before a jury convicted him of murder, authorities said.

The man, Terrence Miller, 78, was charged last year with killing Jody Loomis in 1972 in Snohomish County, which is about 20 miles north of Seattle.

Loomis, 20, had been riding her bike to visit her horse at a nearby stable when she was sexually assaulted and then shot in the head with a .22-caliber gun, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Genetic genealogy has been instrumental in identifying more than 40 suspects in languishing cold cases, most notably the so-called Golden State Killer in California. It also led to a double-murder conviction in another high-profile case in the same Pacific Northwest county where Loomis was killed.

Just before 10 a.m. Monday, sheriff’s deputies in Edmonds, Washington, responded to a report of a suicide and found what they believed to be Miller’s body, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office said. Miller had been out on bond, and a family member reported the suicide, the sheriff’s office said.

For decades, the killing of Loomis had stumped investigators. A couple who had gone out target shooting discovered her partially nude body off a secluded dirt road near Bothell, Washington, on Aug. 23, 1972. Semen was recovered from Loomis’ body and from a “waffle stomper” hiking boot that she had been wearing at the time and had borrowed from her sister.

In 2008, the samples were sent to the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory for DNA testing, but they did not return a match.

The breakthrough in the case came in 2018 when investigators, working with Parabon NanoLabs, were able to put together a family tree of possible suspects based on the semen sample found on the heel of the victim’s hiking boot. The company uses DNA to help law enforcement agencies find genetic matches.

That’s when investigators began their surveillance of Miller, whom they followed to a nearby casino and from whom they retrieved a coffee cup that he had thrown in the garbage, the probable cause affidavit said. The DNA sample was an exact match to the semen found on Loomis’ boot, the affidavit said. He was arrested in April 2019 and charged with first-degree murder.

Both of Loomis’ parents are deceased, and her sister could not be immediately reached for comment Monday night.

Montana authorities have concluded that Richard William Davis, who died in Cabot in 2012 at the age of 70, was responsible for the 1974 abduction and slaying of a five-year-old in Missoula 46 years ago.
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The use of DNA evidence and family tree genetic research led to the closing of the case of the death of Siobhan McGuinness. Her father appeared at a Montana news conference Monday announcing the finding.

Davis apparently was just passing through Montana at the time. He worked for many years as a truck driver. His descendants cooperated with authorities in the cracking of the cold case, authorities said.

The FBI said Davis was linked to an attempted abduction of a New York child in 1973 and authorities are investigating other potential links. He lived in North Little Rock in the 1970s and 1980s and moved to Cabot in the late 1980s. The FBI said he worked as a security guard at Arkansas School for the Deaf and Blind in the 1970s or 1980s and also volunteered at Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Arkansas.

tricia griffith wrote:
Anti-K, this whole forum has example after example after example that an intruder did not commit this crime.

No one can show one scintilla of evidence of an intruder.

As owner, I do my best to stay out of actual discussions about a crime.

The JBR case is the one expection.

Websleuths is a leader in true crime information as well as discussion. People come here to get information. It is imperative we deal with the facts. Not fantasy.

All I ask for are facts and a logical connecting of the dots. Logic and facts.

When I get time I will be going through the forum to make sure the JonBenet Ramsey forum is being held up to the high standards just like all our other forums on Websleuths.

The days of allowing anyone to post anything because it's part of their "theory" are gone. Facts and logic. Very simple.

Host Tricia Griffith is a veteran radio disc jockey and owner of Websleuths.com and owner of Forums for Justice.org.

tricia griffith wrote:
Anti-K, this whole forum has example after example after example that an intruder did not commit this crime.

No one can show one scintilla of evidence of an intruder.

delmar england wrote:
Letter to Boulder Colorado District Attorney, Mary Keenan

The crime scene consisted of an obviously bogus multi-page "ransom note" utilizing local materials. JonBenet's body was left in the basement of the Ramsey home with crude trappings falling woefully short of presenting a convincing kidnap\murder scene as it was intended to do. Even without pointing out more of a very long list of corroborating facts, the bogus note and inept staging is more than sufficient to isolate the perpetrators to the Ramsey household. Only a few minutes in examining and evaluating the evidence is required to reach this conclusion. It is impossible to reach any other conclusion on the facts. There was and is no evidentiary reason to look anywhere else. The only mystery to be solved was and is which Ramsey did what in relation to JonBenet's death.

Although it is not possible to reach any other conclusion from the evidence, it is possible to ignore the evidence and mentally invent "evidence" to take the place of truth and keep it hidden. Prompted by preconceived notions set in a context of money and political influence in conjunction with investigative cowardice and incompetence, this is precisely what has been going on for over six years.

delmar wrote:
Handwriting? Patsy has not been ruled out by several examiners. By my own analysis, not of the writing, but of the mind match between the note and Patsy is clear. This is explained in my analysis of the "ransom note." So far, neither you nor anyone else has quoted and challenged it. So, to say the handwriting does not match the Ramseys, thus all Ramseys are excluded as author, is just another arbitrary declaration without substance. Note the exclusion of Ramseys necessarily depends on the intruder idea of no factual substance.

DNA? So, it does not match the family. So what? Who does it match? Unknown? If unknown, how can it be known to connect to the crime and be "evidence?" If the source of this DNA were known, then factually connected to the crime scene, then it is evidence. Absence this, it is just more speculation that caters to intruder mental creation.

Does the DNA have to be connected to the crime? Could it not be from a benign source totally removed from the crime scene? Again, the alleged evidence evidences nothing except itself with no known connection to the crime. No outsider as perpetrator is required to explain the DNA since no connection is known as crime related.

The same is true for boot print, hairs, fibers, etc.. A close look into anyone's house would most likely turn up all sorts of things whose source were unknown whether there is a crime or not. To call something whose source and cause is unknown as evidence is to say it causal related while simultaneously saying cause is unknown, thus relationship unknown; more "negative evidence." If my recollection of high school Latin is correct, this could be called "ignotium per ignotius", the unknown by the more unknown.

This "Ramsey defense" "thinking" is a direct and absurd contradiction that is without limit. With this kind of "investigative latitude", I dare say that one could "prove" anything; or at least, convince the deluded self that he or she has done so. "negative evidence?" Surely, thou jest. I repeat: All known evidence is local.

delmar england wrote:
For every "could be", there is a "could be not", therefore, inconclusive until cause is known. Right? No thing is evidence until evidentiary cause is known. Right? Are we in agreement so far? If not, please point out what you think is my error in thinking, and why you think it is error.

A shoe print is found in the basement whose cause is unknown. It "could be" evidence of an intruder. "Could be not" is forgotten and "evidence" of an intruder is declared to be fact. There is a palm print with cause unknown; a rope with source unknown that "could be" something brought in by an intruder; an unidentified fiber, a baseball bat that "could have" been used by the intruder; a bit of dirt or leaves at a window well which "could have" been disturbed by an intruder. The list goes on and on and on.

This massive "evidence" stated to be more consistent with a theory of intruder than Ramsey guilt is hot air, nothing more than a string of unknowns verbally laced together on "could be", simultaneously divorced from the known, and declared to be much evidence of an intruder. Ridiculous to the max. No wonder no one will step forward and answer questions about alleged evidence of an alleged intruder. Its indefensible.

The beauty of truth is that it is consistent. Every fact is a complement of and blends with every other fact without contradiction. The presence of a contradiction is also the presence of error. Are we in agreement up to this point?

“Using all types of genetic genealogy, they arrived at a suspect,” explains Crocker. “After speaking with his family members, we were able to determine without a doubt that Duncan was our only suspect, and he’s the one that committed the murder of Deborah Tomlinson.”