The serial offender who identified the cigarette butt as the cold case killer behind the 1995 murder of a 61-year-old woman whose naked body was found in a ditch: the killer died in 2016, DNA was taken during an autopsy.
- A serial offender has been identified as the killer behind the unsolved murder of a Washington DC woman in 1995 thanks to DNA extracted from a cigarette butt.
- Patricia Barnes was 61 when a passer-by found her naked in a ditch who discovered her body in South Kitsap County 26 years ago.
- Douglas Keith Crowne, who died in 2016, was identified this week as her suspected killer.
- “The pivot for the evidence was a cigarette butt found at the site of a body dump,” KCSO Senior Detective Mike Grant said Wednesday.
A serial offender who died in 2016 was identified by DNA as the killer involved in the murder of a 61-year-old woman found naked in a ditch in 1995, thanks to a cigarette butt found at the scene.
Douglas Keith Krohn was identified last week as the killer of Patricia Barnes thanks to DNA taken during an autopsy by an Army veterinarian and convicted robber, which matched discarded cigarettes found at the crime scene.
Kron was 54 years old when he died of an unspecified cause in 2016, and now police are checking to see if his DNA matches DNA found in any other unsolved murders.
Barnes was 61 years old when she was found naked in a ditch by a passer-by who discovered her abandoned body on the side of Peacock Hill Road in South Kitsap County 26 years ago.
Detectives determined that she had been shot twice in the head. The motive for the murder was never reported. The police initially feared that she might have been the victim of serial killer Robert Lee Yates, but her real killer has now been exposed.
“The pivot for the evidence was a cigarette butt that was found at the site of a body dump,” KCSO Lead Detective Mike Grant said during a press conference on Wednesday, FOX 13 Seattle reported.
“Evidence on the body can mean one of two or three different things, but when you have a cigarette butt with DNA and DNA on her body and on things around her body, I came to the conclusion that we had the right guy. .’
Douglas Keith Kron (pictured) in August 1995 He died in prison back in 2016 and was identified this week as Barnes’ killer.
In the photo, Patricia Barnes was 61 years old when a passer-by found her naked in a ditch who discovered her abandoned body in South Kitsap County 26 years ago.
DNA taken from a cigarette butt at the scene found no match in the FBI system.
But the genealogy firm Othram joined the hunt and was able to provide a genetic profile of the suspect.
This allowed the cops to compile a family tree and identify Kron as the prime suspect.
Kron was 33 years old at the time of Barnes’ murder and had addresses in both Seattle and Tacoma, and had five previous criminal convictions, including first-degree robbery in 1984.
A composite sketch of the suspect was eventually released to the public as investigators worked on the case for several months. It bears a noticeable resemblance to Kron’s photograph, but cops were unable to identify it at the time.
In the meantime, the case remained unsolved until 2018, when KSCO detectives reopened an investigation into Barnes’ death “as part of a new focus on working on ‘cold cases’,” according to a Facebook post released by the sheriff’s office on Friday.
A composite sketch of the suspect was eventually made public as investigators worked on the case for several months, however they were unable to identify him at the time.
Investigators have since questioned the officials involved in the original investigation back in 1995 and reviewed the evidence again.
They got lucky in the end thanks to a DNA match made during
“Ultimately, the successful completion of the investigation of this ‘cold case’ depends on the initial investigative response from [d]in 1995,” Grant said in a statement posted on the KSCO Facebook page.
“The success of modern investigative methods is only possible if they are based on a thorough and professional foundation of good policing.”
Complicating matters somewhat is the fact that all of the detectives involved in the original investigation have since retired, making it difficult to track down those who investigated the original crime scene.
Grant eventually contacted the surviving Barnes family to tell them about KSCO’s findings and described their reaction as “shocked” and grateful that they had the answers now after nearly 30 years of uncertainty.