DNA has proven to be a remarkable tool for law enforcement and criminal investigators. In this week’s blog, DNA helps to solve the 47-year-old cold case of the murder of Jody Loomis.
Jody Loomis Murdered
It was August 28, 1972. Jody Loomis, 20, dressed in a crop top, jeans, and hiking boots, was riding her ten-speed bicycle to the pasture where she boarded her horse. She never made it. Witnesses last saw her about halfway between her home near Bothell, Washington, and the field.
Later that day, 18-year-old Cathy Lenac and a friend found Loomis’ half-naked body lying beside a lonely dirt road. She had been sexually assaulted and shot in the head. The couple loaded Loomis into their car and drove her to a hospital, but doctors pronounced her dead on arrival.
Of course, police collected evidence, but little pointed to a suspect, and the case soon went cold.
One of the pieces of evidence investigators collected was a spot of semen on one of the boots Jody wore that day. By 2008, DNA technology had advanced to the point where the Washington State Patrol crime lab could develop a DNA profile. Unfortunately, there was no match to anyone in law enforcement databases. Jody’s killer had apparently steered clear of the law.
New Hope for the Jody Loomis Case
Ten years later, in 2018, Snohomish County sent the sample to Parabon, a lab in Virginia that uses genetic genealogy to analyze DNA. Parabon developed a family tree that led authorities to Terrance Miller.
By this time, Miller was 77 years old. Investigators followed him to a Tulalip, Washington, casino, where they confiscated a coffee cup he had discarded. The DNA profile developed from the coffee cup was an exact match to the semen sample recovered from Jody’s boot.
Police followed Miller and continued to build their case, finally arresting him on April 10, 2019.
Epilogue
On November 9, 2020, Terrance Miller, age 78, died at his home, an apparent suicide. Three hours after sheriff’s deputies found Miller’s body, a jury convicted him of the first-degree murder of Jody Loomis.
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