Niner
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Saw this case on the DNA thread - and thought I'd make a thread for Tonya. Case solved after 35 years!!
Pensacola police make arrest in 35-year-old cold case murder using familial DNA
March 18, 2020
PENSACOLA - Tonya Ethridge McKinley was 23 years old and had an 18-month-old son waiting for her at home when she was killed in the early-morning hours of Jan. 1, 1985, in Pensacola.
She was last seen alive around 1:30 a.m. at Darryl’s Bar & Grille in Pensacola, and in the early-morning hours of New Year’s Day her body was found in an empty lot at the corner of Peacock Drive and Creighton Road, just one block off Scenic Highway. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered.
On Wednesday, 35 years later, Pensacola police made an arrest in the case: Daniel Leonard Wells, 57, is facing charges of first-degree murder and first-degree sexual battery.
Wells was identified after Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based company working with the Pensacola Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, ran a DNA sample obtained from the scene of the crime through an open-source genealogy database and identified several different people believed to be distant cousins of the suspect.
[.....]
Wells is being held without bond at Escambia County Jail and will make his first court appearance Thursday morning.
Can not copy/paste from Escambia jail site, but his next hearing is on 4/8 @ 8:30a
Pensacola police make arrest in 35-year-old cold case murder using familial DNA
March 18, 2020
PENSACOLA - Tonya Ethridge McKinley was 23 years old and had an 18-month-old son waiting for her at home when she was killed in the early-morning hours of Jan. 1, 1985, in Pensacola.
She was last seen alive around 1:30 a.m. at Darryl’s Bar & Grille in Pensacola, and in the early-morning hours of New Year’s Day her body was found in an empty lot at the corner of Peacock Drive and Creighton Road, just one block off Scenic Highway. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered.
On Wednesday, 35 years later, Pensacola police made an arrest in the case: Daniel Leonard Wells, 57, is facing charges of first-degree murder and first-degree sexual battery.
Wells was identified after Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based company working with the Pensacola Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, ran a DNA sample obtained from the scene of the crime through an open-source genealogy database and identified several different people believed to be distant cousins of the suspect.
[.....]
Wells is being held without bond at Escambia County Jail and will make his first court appearance Thursday morning.
Can not copy/paste from Escambia jail site, but his next hearing is on 4/8 @ 8:30a
