After more than three decades of questioning and grieving, Tamika Reyes finally knows who killed her mother. Anna Kane was 26 years old when her body was found on October 23, 1988, in a wooded area near Reading, Pennsylvania, with string around her neck.
An investigation revealed that she had been strangled elsewhere and thrown into the woods.
A local newspaper, Reading Eagle, ran a front-page story seeking information about Kane’s death. In February 1990, about 15 months after she was killed, the newspaper received an anonymous letter from a “concerned citizen” with information only the killer would know, police said.
The author of the letter also left his DNA when he licked the envelope. The DNA in the saliva matched what was found on Kane’s clothes, officials said this week.
But the years turned into decades, and the police still didn’t know who the suspect was. Finally, in 2022, the Pennsylvania State Police used genetic genealogy tests to identify the killer — a local man named Scott Grim — officers said at a news conference last week.
Now Reyes finally has some answers — though he’s sad for his grandmother, who died before he knew the case was resolved.
“I felt a little bit of everything when I found out,” she told the CNN . “I was happy to finally put a face behind the monster that took her from us (and) upset that he could never face the consequences.”
She was 9 years old when her mother was killed
For 34 years, Reyes, along with her two brothers and her grandmother, have wondered who killed Kane. The lack of closure added to the anguish of losing her mother, she said.
Then Reyes got a call last week from a detective about an impressive development in the case.
After years of waiting for justice, she was relieved that investigators had finally identified her mother’s killer. But she was disappointed to learn that Grim died in 2018 of natural causes at age 58 and will not pay for robbing her and her siblings of a childhood with a mother.
Reyes was 9 years old when her mother was killed and said she thinks about her every day.
“She was a fireworks display — very outgoing, not afraid of anything, very honest and direct and caring,” she said.
Reyes said that one of her fondest childhood memories was walking her mother and seeing her suddenly dance to random music playing in stores as they passed.
After her death, Reyes’ aunt took her in and raised her while her two brothers moved in with their father.
Reyes said she is still troubled by the media’s portrayal of her mother, who was unemployed at the time of her death. Although her mother had a dark past that included drug use and prostitution, she was trying to turn her life around, Reyes said.
“She was portrayed as a murdered prostitute, as if she deserved what happened to her,” said Reyes, 43, who lives in Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania. “It was painful. She was more than that, she was a victim. She was a mother. She was loved. Nobody deserves what happened to her.”
Investigators used innovative technology to crack the case
Investigators said they identified Grim as the killer using genetic genealogy, which combines DNA evidence and traditional genealogy to find biological connections between people.
In recent years, companies like 23andMe and Ancestry have encouraged people to explore their genealogy by spitting it into a tube and submitting it for analysis. These companies then send back information about their customers’ ethnic heritage, genetic health risks, and family tree – as well as a raw data file of their DNA.
With millions of users looking to explore their genetic roots, the practice has become big business. It has also become a valuable tool for law enforcement officers trying to solve old crimes.
DNA collected from crime scenes can now be uploaded to an online service that compares it to DNA submitted by people who use companies like 23andMe to explore their genealogy.
If a possible match is found, genealogists can build family trees to help police find possible suspects. In recent years, this method has helped solve some of the country’s most high-profile cold cases, including that of the notorious Golden State Killer.
Investigators analyzed Kane’s clothes and found traces of the DNA of an unknown man. They later determined that it matched the DNA on the 1990 envelope, confirming investigators’ belief that the person behind the letter was the killer.
But while investigators had Grim’s DNA profile, there was nothing to identify him because he was never arrested for anything that required his DNA to be put into the system, officials said.
This is where genetic genealogy comes in. The effectiveness of genetic genealogy in cold cases depends on the quality of the crime scene DNA and whether it has been degraded, state trooper Daniel Womer told a news conference last week.
The careful preservation of DNA evidence by detectives in 1988 provided a solid foundation for today’s investigators to scrutinize with new technology, the Pennsylvania State Police Sgt. Nathan Treat said at the press conference.
“All these things were…preserved the way they were supposed to be, because they knew that probably somewhere in the future whatever they collected could be that little piece of evidence (to solve the case),” Trate said. “Well, here we are in 2022, and that little evidence they collected was just what we needed.”
Reyes still has questions for her mother’s killer
Investigators don’t know much about Grim, except that he lived in the area around Hamburg, Pennsylvania.
They are trying to determine if he knew Kane and have asked anyone who knows the nature of their relationship to get in touch. So far, they haven’t found any link.
“But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some connection that we haven’t discovered yet,” Womer said.
Kane was reportedly working as a prostitute at the time she was killed and may have been meeting with a client, Womer said, adding that police are trying to determine if it was Grim.
The Pennsylvania State Police refused to release the 1990 letter to the paper or elaborate on exactly what it said.
“There were just intimate details about where she was disposed of, how her clothes were displayed, stuff like that,” Womer said. “This led investigators to believe that whoever wrote the letter had committed the murder.”
Investigators said the biggest breakthrough in the case came this year after they obtained a new sample of Grim’s DNA to match against older evidence. They declined to detail how they obtained DNA from him when he has been dead for four years.
“It was obtained legally through a search warrant,” Trate said.
Now that they have identified Grim’s DNA, police will review other open cold cases to see if he was involved, Womer said.
Meanwhile, Reyes still misses her mother.
“It’s been hard growing up without a mother,” she said. “No child should have to grow up without a mother.”
Reyes still has so many questions he would ask Grim if he were still alive. Why did he kill a young girl who was just trying to take care of her children? And what went through his mind when he learned that she had a family that loved her?
Reyes knows he will never get the answers. But she’s glad her family finally met her mother’s killer.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
