US Air Force veteran identified by DNA as the murderer of a student raped and strangled in 1980 – Texasnewstoday.com

San Diego officials have identified the murder suspect as a U.S. Air Force veteran, relying on a combination of advanced DNA testing and genetic genealogy to resolve the 1980 cold case murder of a local college student. ..

But for 20-year-old Michelle Wyatt and her family, John Patrick Hogan, police say he strangled a young woman on the phone line after the rape, died in 2004 from an overdose of drugs, so there is no justice. 42 years old.

On Wednesday, the San Diego County Sheriffs Office announced a major break in the 40-year-old Wyatt case.

According to a press release, Hogan, who probably didnt know Wyatt at the age of 18 at the time of the murder, used a commercial genealogy site to extract previously unknown DNA collected at the crime scene. After collation, he was identified as a suspect.

San Diego officials have identified the late John Patrick Hogan (left) as the man they say raped and killed Michelle Wyatt, 20, in October 1980.

Wyatt, a college student, was found raped and then strangled on a telephone line in an apartment in Santee, California (pictured).

It depicts a tombstone bearing Michelle Wyatts name and her date of birth and death.

The incident occurred on October 9, 1980, after a woman reported that her roommate Wyatt was dead in her living room with a telephone line wrapped around her neck in a Kerrigan Court mansion in San Diego, a suburb of Santi. Began to occur. ..

An autopsy revealed that Wyatt, who attended Grossmont College and worked as a cashier, was suffocated by strangulation after being sexually assaulted.

The attack took place early in the morning shortly after Wyatts boyfriend left her apartment and locked the front door behind him.

According to the sheriffs department, witnesses reported hearing screams from Wyatts apartment, but no one turned to 911 for help.

Investigators identified and interviewed multiple suspects and tracked all possible leads until the case cooled.

Sixteen years later, Wyatts murder was considered for additional clues and the use of new DNA technology. Nearly 90 potential suspects were screened, many of whom provided DNA samples for comparison with biological evidence collected in 1980.

Samples were sent for inspection, but no suspect was identified at that time.

Hogan (left) was an 18-year-old US Air Force officer at the time of the murder. Wyatt (right) attended Grossmont College, worked as a cashier, and had a boyfriend.

Wyatts mother, Louise Wyatt, is depicted talking to ABC10 shortly after her daughters brutal murder.

In June 2000, field evidence was reexamined using modern methods, revealing two separate DNA profiles.

The rape kit recovered from Wyatt revealed that one of the DNA profiles was the boyfriend of the victim who was eliminated as a suspect and the other was from an unidentified man.

Hogan died of drug overdose in 2004 and cannot be tried. He was 42 years old.

In 2001, the DNA of an unknown suspect was entered into the Combined DNA Index System, but no match was found.

Last September, the Cold Case Team of the Sheriff County Sheriff Murder Unit in San Diego and the Sheriff Crime Institute chose to work with Wyatts murder using a research genetic diagram.

For the next nine months, with the help of the FBI, the team identified Hogan, known as Pat Hogan, as a potential suspect using genetic genealogy.

Subsequent investigations revealed that Hogan was born in Arizona in 1961 and moved to Santi in the 1970s. He attended Santana High School and may have once lived in the same apartment as Wyatt.

Hogan had friends at the Wyatt complex and visited him frequently. At the time of the murder, Hogan lived a little over a mile from the crime scene.

Hogan joined the United States Air Force in 1979 and was briefly stationed in New Mexico. He traveled back and forth between Arizona, Idaho, and California until he died of an overdose of methamphetamine in 2004. He was never identified as a suspect in Wyatts lifelong murder.

Louise Wyatt, who saw him talking to ABC10 in 2020, said he was grateful for the efforts of the authorities but was disappointed with the outcome of the incident.

Further DNA testing revealed that the unknown DNA recovered by Wyatts rape and murder system came from Hogan.

The investigation revealed substantive and compelling evidence that Hogan had sexually assaulted and killed Michelle, a sheriffs press release said.

The sheriffs murder unit used the science of genetic genealogy to track relatives with a DNA profile that matched the DNA profile of the murderers unidentified suspect.

The suspects profile was created and uploaded to a commercial genealogy site where law enforcement agencies can participate.

The Cold Case team then created a family tree. This led the detective to other potential relatives of the man. The process eventually ended by directing the researchers to closer relatives and contacting Hogans direct family members who provided the DNA samples, which confirmed the identification.

Michelles murder would probably not have been resolved without the use of the genetic genealogy of the investigation, the sheriffs office said.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Wyatts parents in their 80s thanked the murder investigators for their work in identifying their daughters murderer, but said they were disappointed with the results.

Okay, hes dead, but I wanted to be able to talk to this guy personally, said Michelles mother, Louise Wyatt. The ending is scary.

U.S. Air Force veteran identified by DNA as the murderer of a student raped and strangled in 1980

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US Air Force veteran identified by DNA as the murderer of a student raped and strangled in 1980 - Texasnewstoday.com