PONTIAC, Mich., July 18 (UPI) -- DNA has linked a 70-year-old convicted pedophile to the killings of two boys in the Detroit area more than 35 years ago, a prosecutor said.
Paul Walton, chief assistant prosecutor in Michigan's Oakland County, said Archibald Edward Sloan is at most a person of interest, The Detroit News reported. Sloan is now serving a life sentence for sex crimes.
A hair found in Sloan's 1966 Pontiac Bonneville had mitochondrial DNA matching hairs found on the bodies of Mark Stebbins and Timothy King, District Attorney Jessica Cooper said at a news conference Tuesday. Since mitochondrial DNA passes unchanged from mother to daughter, either the hairs came from the same person or from people descended through a female line from the same woman.
"No one is calling him a suspect, but no one is ruling him out either," Walton said. "We are interested in him, who he associated with, who he hung out with, who might have used his car at some point. The best I can say is that he is a person of interest to investigators."
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Mark was kidnapped at age 12 in Ferndale, Mich., in February 1976 and Timothy, 11, in Birmingham, Mich., in March 1977. Two girls were abducted and killed around the same time, but no hair was found on one victim and hairs on the other did not match those on the two boys.
Investigators said hair samples taken from Sloan's Pontiac Bonneville by investigators in the Stebbins case were recently sent to the FBI lab. DNA testing did not exist in 1976.
Cooper said Sloan has not been cooperative with investigators who interviewed him in prison, the Detroit Free Press reported.
