DNA leads to arrest in 25-year-old slayings

PHILADELPHIA Hours before dawn on March 17, 1989, a man peered into an abandoned Oldsmobile in a North Philadelphia lot and saw a body.

Police identified the deceased as 19-year-old Ruby Ellis of the 2500 block of West Girard Avenue. A brief news item in The Inquirer the next day reported that she had been strangled, that she was wearing only a jacket, and that she had been dead for several hours when she was found in the car at 15th and Flora Streets.

Five weeks later, The Inquirer ran an item on another strangling: Cheryl Hanible, 33, of Southwest Philadelphia, found inside a burned-out, vacant bar on Girard, blocks from the site of the March 17 slaying.

She had been gagged with a sock and strangled with a shoelace. Neighbors described the building as "a hangout for the homeless, drug addicts, and prostitutes."

No arrests were reported, and the case went unresolved for 25 years - until Wednesday, when detectives using decades-old DNA collected from both crime scenes charged a Paulsboro man in connection with the killings.

Rudolph Churchill, 51, was charged with two counts of murder and related offenses and was awaiting arraignment Wednesday night.

Churchill wasn't on any suspect list in 1989, said Lt. Mark Deegan, who heads the Special Investigations Unit.

But about three years ago, the Police Department received a federal grant that allowed detectives to begin going through old cases for DNA evidence.

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DNA leads to arrest in 25-year-old slayings