DNA from beer mug leads to suspect in 40-year-old cold case death of Stonington woman’s sister – theday.com

For nearly 40 years, the murder of 21-year-old college student Helene Pruszynski has stumped Colorado detectives and left the only living member of Helene's immediately family, Stonington resident Janet Johnson, without answers.

But this week, Johnson finally received the phone call she had been waiting decades for: Detectives had used DNA to find and arrest a suspect in her little sister's death.

DNA from a used beer mug in a Florida bar helped detectives find and arrest the suspect 62-year-old James Curtis Clanton in Lake Butler, Fla., on Dec. 11 39 years and 11 months after he allegedly raped and murdered Pruszynski on Jan. 16, 1980, according to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office and Douglas County court records.

Pruszynski, a senior at Wheaton College and a native of Hamilton, Mass., had been in Colorado for just two weeks when she was abducted, raped and stabbed to death on her way home from her internship at KHOW radio station. Her body was found in a field the next day in Highlands Ranch, Colo. But until now, the stranger she encountered on her way home, who cut her life short, was a mystery.

DNA samples were taken from Pruszynski's body in 1980 and preserved, The New York Times reported, but investigators at the time did not have the technology to analyze them.With new technology and theassistance of genealogy servicessuch as United Data Connect, Ancestry.com and GEDmatch.com,investigators were able to build a group of suspects that included Clanton. In November, investigatorsfollowed him and observed himdrinking beer at a Florida bar. DNA swabs taken from a mughe was using matched the DNA profile of samples that had been taken from Pruszynski's body, the Times reported.

Now, Johnson, who has lived in Stonington for more than 35 years, knows that justice will be served for her family, and hopefully many other families through the use of new DNA technology that helped detectives finally find a suspect in her sister's case.

"It's a wonderful thing that they were able to find this animal," Johnson saidduring a phone call Wednesday. "I hope that other cases will be able to be solved using the same DNA technology."

Though what happened to her sister is still to this day "devastating and heartbreaking,"Johnson said shehopes this arrest will helpbringsome closure.

"I hope other families are able to get closure, too," Johnson said. "There is no peace in these situations, but at least closure."

Last week, investigators were able to track down Clanton in his Florida town using DNA collected at the crime scene. The break came after the department deployed more than 20 detectives to work on the case in Colorado and Florida over the past year, Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said atnews conference Monday.

Spurlock said that Pruszynski's case first went cold in 1980, less than a year after the investigation opened. It was reopened in 1988, said Spurlock, but quickly went cold again.

In 2013, Spurlock started a Cold Case Review team that aimed to home in on new technology that could help crack cases that had yet to be solved.

"We really started focusing on cold cases and started really focusing on things that we could use, and in many cases, it's DNA," Spurlock said.

Investigators said that there was a significant amount of crime scene evidence that was maintained and cared for over the years that ended up leading to Clanton, a truck driver who was arrested and taken into custody after stepping out of his parked truck.

Clanton, whose legal name was Curtis Allen White at the time of the murder, had just moved to Douglas County from Arkansas and was working at a landscaping business in 1980, investigators said. It was unclear when he legally changed his name, investigators said.

George Brauchler, district attorney for the 18th Judicial District in Colorado,said at the news conferencethat although DNA and new technology played a major role in breaking this case, it wasn't a magic key to unlocking it.

Theres DNA thats part of this case, a big part of this case, but dont misunderstand that its like Hey, we just entered DNA into some voodoo database and out popped this guy,' it wasn't like that," Brauchler said. "It was a combination of DNA existing, technology that was available, but then the dogged police work that was done...that helped put the pieces together for us to find that missing piece of evidence that helped tie it all together."

"I would say the technology was an undeniable part of this case but I don't want the public to think, 'Hey, we just came up with this new scientific method' and absent the hard work of human beings actually doing old-school police work and digging around that this would have just solved itself," he said.

Clanton was extradited from Florida over the weekend and is being held in Douglas County.

Brauchler said Clanton has been charged based on "various theories of first-degree murder," including first-degree murder after deliberation with intent, felony murder predicated on an underlying crime of robbery, felony murder predicated on an underlying crime of kidnapping and felony murder predicated on an underlying crime of sexual assault and then a standalone charge of kidnapping.

Charges weren't filed on the underlying crimes of robbery and sexual assault because the statute of limitations has run out on those charges, Brauchler said.

At the news conference, Spurlock said that calling Johnson with the news of the arrest this week "was kind of one of those bittersweet moments because this was a long time, almost 40 years."

Spurlock, looking at a family photo of Helene, Janet, and their brother and grandmother who have since died, recognized that most of Helene's relatives did not live to see her case solved.

"Because it had taken so long, so many people have gone and don't have the opportunity to hear this, that we made an arrest," Spurlock said.

"It's sad that they aren't around to hear this news," Johnson said.

During the news conference, Spurlock talked about Pruszynski's life and recalled the future she was working toward when it was cut short.

"This is a young girl who was just starting her life," Spurlock said. Helene "came to Colorado to have an opportunity to make a difference. She wanted to be in journalism, she wanted to be a part of a bigger story."

Johnson, too, reminisced on her sister's potential.

"I want people to know what a special person Helene was. My sister was my best friend," she said in a statement. "Helene was on track to do great things, she had a bright future ahead of her. Not a day has passed that we haven't missed her."

Johnson said that the detectives who helped make this break in her sister's case are her heroes and that she hopes other families will experience the same sense of closure she got this week.

Brauchler said he thinks they will.

"Cases like this give me hope for the future. As we continue to make these technological advances, there are crimes still unsolved today that I have great optimism for because of cases like this, that we're going to end up solving," he said.

"I think the public ought to feel good about that," he said,"and I think murderers ought to be scared to death of it."

t.hartz@theday.com

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DNA from beer mug leads to suspect in 40-year-old cold case death of Stonington woman's sister - theday.com