DNA from murder scene used to create sketches of suspect in Ontario cold case
Posted August 28, 2018 1:19 pm.
Last Updated August 28, 2018 1:54 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Ontario provincial police have released images of a suspect in a 1988 murder created from DNA recovered from the scene in the hope the sketches will lead to a break in the case.
Police say they worked with a DNA technology company in Virginia to develop the digital images of the man suspected in Thera Dieleman’s killing.
The force says 80-year-old Dieleman was found beaten and strangled in her home in Blandford-Blenheim Township, Ont., on Sept. 16, 1988.
Police say the widow had put up a fight, potentially causing injuries to her attacker.
They say the suspect is believed to have been driving a flatbed farm truck on the day of the murder.
Police say they hope the new images of the suspect — one of what he may have looked like in 1988 and another of what he could look like today — will lead to new information from the public.
They say a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Dieleman’s killer remains on offer, even 30 years after the murder took place.
