A Florida teenager whose skeletal stays have been discovered tied to a tree in 1974 was recognized and will have been the sufferer of a serial killer, authorities stated.
The stays have been decided to be these of Susan Gale Poole, 15, after a forensic DNA agency developed a profile from her stays and recognized potential relations, detective Invoice Springer of the Palm Seaside Sheriff’s Workplace instructed reporters final week.
Springer stated the likeliest suspect was Gerard Schaefer, a former police officer and sheriff’s deputy convicted in 1973 of killing two teenage women within the space the place Poole lived.
Schaefer was implicated within the deaths of greater than two-dozen others, the Related Press reported. He was fatally stabbed by one other inmate in 1995.
Poole’s household reported her lacking earlier than Christmas in 1972, Springer stated. On the time of her disappearance she was residing in a trailer park along with her household close to Fort Lauderdale and staying with a buddy in Wilton Manors.
Springer stated she had dropped out of highschool and was beforehand reported as a runaway.
Schaefer was recognized to choose up hitchhikers — one thing else Poole did — and he was a police officer in Wilton Manors, Springer stated.
“Every thing sort of suits that manner however I haven’t got any bodily proof to hyperlink him to it,” he stated.
The teenager’s physique was discovered on a coastal state highway in June 1974, roughly a year-and-a-half after she vanished. Her stays have been tied to a mangrove tree with wire, Springer stated.
An anthropologist who examined her discovered no trauma to her physique, Springer stated.
Earlier efforts to establish her stays, together with including her DNA to a nationwide database in 2015, failed, Springer stated. The forensic DNA agency, Othram, reached out to the sheriff’s workplace and stated it had “nice success” figuring out degraded DNA.
Springer now hopes to reconstruct the final weeks of her life by way of associates she might have confided in to doubtlessly hyperlink her killing to Schaefer. He supplied three names — Julie Hunt, Michelle Williamson and Greg Anderson — and requested that they contact the sheriff’s workplace.
