DALLAS (AP) – Investigators arrested a 60-year-old Dallas man on a capital murder charge in the 1984 killing of a 21-year-old woman after linking him to the crime through genealogical databases, prosecutors said on Friday.
Edward Morgan was arrested in the killing of aspiring model Mary Jane Thompson, who was also sexually assaulted, the Dallas County district attorney’s office said.
Morgan was being held on Friday at the Dallas County jail. Bond was not yet listed for him, nor was an attorney.
Prosecutors said Dallas police re-opened the case in 2009 and that DNA testing was done on swabs from the autopsy. A male DNA profile was identified by never matched to a specific suspect and the case went cold again.
After police opened the case again in 2018, they worked with a team from the district attorney’s office and the Federal Beureau of Investigation (FBI). Prosecutors said Morgan was identified as a suspect through technology that uses genealogical websites to identify potential relatives of a suspect based on DNA collected at a crime scene. DNA testing confirmed this week that he matched the profile taken from the autopsy in 1984.
