This week I will not be talking about a cold case. rather a cold case that was solved last year after 48 years of being cold.

On August 23, 1972, Jody Loomis was  to a horse stable near what is now Bothell-Everett Highway and 164th Street in Mill Creek. She would never be seen alive again. She was las seen riding her bike at around 5 p.m. She was taken down a dirt road into a wooded area, where she was raped and then shot in the head. She was only 20 years old. She was found only 30 minutes after the incident. She was rushed to the hospital but died on the way.

In 2008, there was DNA samples taken from the crime scene and sent to a lab for testing. A partial DNA profile was found on a semen sample on Loomis’ boot and was uploaded into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database. However, there wasn’t ever a hit on the sample. In July 2018, the same sample was sent to Parabon NanoLabs for analysis. In August there were possible relatives of the suspect found from the DNA samples. A family tree was then built which helped identify the possible suspect, Terrence Miller.

Police then followed Miller to a casino where they collected a coffee cup that Miller discarded that he had been using. After police obtained the coffee cup they were able to take DNA samples from the cup and align them with the DNA from Jodys boot and they found a match. Soon after Terrence Miller was charged he committed suicide.

There is no way that without the technology that we have today that this case would have ever been solved. It is crazy to me that after 48 years they finally found a break in the case. This makes me think about how many more cases there are that are unsolved that are going to be solved given the technology that we have and the advancements that we are making.