Wedding DJ Raymond Rowe was arrested in connection with the death of Pennsylvania school teacher Christy Mirack over 25 years after her murder, marking yet another instance of DNA technology being used to crack a cold case that had been unsolved for years.
Mirack was 25 years old and working as a sixth-grade teacher at Rohrerstown Elementary School when she was found dead in her home in December 1992 by the principal of her school, who became concerned after Mirack failed to show up for work.
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The teacher was found to have been beaten and sexually assaulted, and her cause of death was ruled a homicide by strangulation. Mirack was also found wearing a coat and gloves, indicating that she was about to leave her home or had been forced back into the building. A wooden cutting board believed to have been used in the attack was found by her body.
Rowe was arrested at his home and charged with criminal homicide. At the time of Mirack’s death, Rowe lived about four miles from the apartment Mirack shared with a roommate and it is unclear if the two knew each other.
“We never let this case go,” Lancaster District Attorney Craig Stedman said, via CBS News. “This has not been easy. But one of the reasons we’ve stuck with it and never forgotten it is it’s so disturbing.”
Years after Mirack’s death, private company Parabon NanoLabs was hired to create “a DNA phenotype ‘composite’ of the killer’s attributes” using DNA left at the crime scene. That report was uploaded to a public genetic genealogy database to search for relatives of the suspect, matching with a relative of Rowe.
“This killer was at liberty from this crime, this brutal crime, for longer than Christy Mirack was on this earth alive,” Stedman said at a news conference. “And they steered us in the path of holding him finally accountable.”
In an undercover operation, investigators took DNA from a water bottle and gum Rowe had used while performing at an elementary school as DJ Freez, which was determined to match DNA found on multiple parts of Mirack’s body as well as the carpet underneath her body, according to prosecutors.
“We know that this defendant raped and brutally murdered Christy Mirack,” Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman said in a statement Monday, via ABC News. “It is a huge step toward providing long-overdue closure for Christy’s family and friends who have spent decades wondering who brutally murdered their loved one.”
Rowe will not be eligible for bail and he has not entered a plea.
Photo Credit: Twitter / @Lancaster_DA
