After 20 years, dead pair linked as mother and son

Decades after the unidentified bodies of a woman and a 10-yearold boy were found in separate states beside a Southern interstate highway, investigators said Tuesday they were mother and son and the boy’s father has confessed to killing them.

The case was cracked thanks to an online DNA database, help from international police and a consultant whose work led to an arrest in the Golden State Killer investigation, authorities said.

But investigators said they kept trying to solve the 1998 cases that they never knew were related, separated by 215 miles along Interstate 85.

“I always kept the case file box under my desk. Every time I turned, I hit it with my leg. I did this so the little boy couldn’t be forgotten,” said Orange County, North Carolina, Sheriff ’s Maj. Tim Horne.

Investigators learned the cases were linked in December, when Dr. Barbara Rae-venter, a consultant, reviewed DNA tests on the boy, Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood said.

Rae-venter matched the child’s DNA to DNA from a relative who had submitted the information to an online database. Investigators learned from the relative the boy was Robert Adam Whitt, who was born in Michigan, Blackwood said.

Meanwhile, South Carolina deputies had found a woman whose nude body was dumped in the woods off I-85 in May 1998, Spartanburg County Sheriff ’s Lt. Kevin Bobo said.

After DNA testing confirmed the victims as mother and son, investigators were able to identify her as Myoung Hwa Cho.

Her husband, the boy’s father, is in federal prison on unrelated charges and has confessed to killings, Bobo said.

Investigators think the woman and her son were killed somewhere else and dumped beside the interstate.