May 8 (UPI) -- Cleveland police say they have used DNA research to solve the 33-year-old strangling of a teenage girl, and arrest her killer.
Barbara Blatnik was 17 when her body was found in the Cleveland suburb of Cuyahoga Falls in 1987. Investigators said she'd been raped and strangled.
Project Porchlight, a non-profit led by Akron author James Renner that raises money for certain cases, recently raised $6,000 to have Identifinders, a California company, do a forensic genealogical analysis using DNA evidence.
Authorities said this week the examination provided a hit that led to suspect James E. Zastawnik.
Cuyahoga Falls detectives reopened the case last summer with new DNA evidence taken from Blatnik's body.
Zastawnik, 67, has now been charged with murder.
"It is great to see justice done for Barbara Blatnik," Cuyahoga Falls Police Chief Jack Davis said in a statement. "The detectives who worked on this over the years never gave up on finding the killer.
"This is also a great example of cooperation between law enforcement, the Porchlight Project, and [the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation] coming together to creatively look for a solution to resolving a brutal murder."
Using familial DNA to narrow down a field of suspects gained widespread attention in 2018 when California authorities used the method to identify a suspect in the Golden State Killer investigation, which involved numerous homicides and sexual assaults that went unsolved for decades.
