Two women in their 70s, both named Marion, were strangled about three months apart in Virginia, puzzling police for two decades, but now detectives hope DNA can help them find the killer.
On Aug. 14, 2006, when Fairfax County police responding to a 911 call found 72-year-old Marion Marshall dead inside her home on Bostwick Drive in Springfield, it didn’t appear to be a homicide.
“Because she had some medical issues and there was just a small bruise on her body,” cold case Detective Michael Hengemuhle said.
But the autopsy found she had been murdered.
Police had no leads. Marshall had no children and wasn’t married at the time of her death.
Then, on Nov. 19 of the same year, a neighbor found 74-year-old Marion Newman dead inside her Springfield home, where she lived alone with no husband or kids. She, too, had been strangled.
Other than name, town, age and manner of death, not much tied the victims together.
“And that’s why it’s been a problem for us on the investigative side, is there just isn’t a common link,” Hengemuhle said. “There hasn’t been somebody that we’ve been able to identify through typical police work.”
So, perhaps atypical police will solve the case.
Detectives recovered a DNA sample from each crime scene that was a match, but a database search came up empty.
They sent the DNA to Parabon Labs in Reston, where scientists determined the killer likely is a Salvadoran man.
Then they tried to use the DNA to map the killer’s family.
“We’re trying to build a family tree,” Hengemuhle said. “So, we know who this person is and we know what some of his genetic markers are and we’re trying to identify other family members that might lead us to who the suspect could be.”
Fairfax County detectives believe the case can be solved. They believe anyone who remembers anything at all about Marion Newman or Marion Marshall — or saw or heard anything in the days leading up to their deaths — may have information that could bring the victims’ families closure they’ve been seeking for two decades.
