Just wanted to add the link regarding the DNA.
AG: Evidence not strong enough to charge man accused of killing Pawtucket girl in 1988
BBM:
After Cormier reopened the case, blood from Christine's pants was tested yet again. The testing produced a so-called Y-STR profile, a more extensive profile than had been available before. That profile was checked against a state database, which came back with the "closest match" to a man who was born five years after Christine was killed. That man had to submit his DNA because of a conviction that mandated he submit a DNA sample.
Police concluded that the suspect whose blood was on Christine's pants would be a close male family member of that "closest match." Joao Monteiro was the man's father.
Thanks for that link, it is very informative. I could be wrong but I wonder if the DNA sample they found could be too degraded at this point? There are some newer ways to test DNA from poor or tiny samples. Maybe they'll be able to pinpoint it with a different more precise method soon.
"State prosecutors declined to even present the case to a grand jury.
The Y-STR DNA, while it didn’t exclude Joao Monteiro, also didn’t exclude all of his paternal male relatives, prosecutors explained.
“That means absent the ability to eliminate the defendant’s father, brothers, uncles and cousins on his father’s side of the family as suspects, we cannot definitively establish that the defendant was the source of that inculpatory DNA sample,” assistant attorney general Timothy Healy wrote.
Other suspects haven’t been excluded, and there is “no other conclusive evidence establishing that this defendant murdered Christine Cole,” Healy wrote in a filing announcing they were not pursuing criminal charges against Monteiro."
