Investigators looking to solve a cold case
Seminole County officers hope new DNA testing will identify victim in 1973 slaying
For more than 45 years, the identity of a young girl found dead in rural Seminole County has remained a mystery for investigators.
Now the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office hopes new DNA testing methods will help identify the girl — who may have been as young as 14.
She was found off Forest City Road near Lake Lotus in August 1973. Investigators believe she was killed more than a month before and dumped in a patch of woods. Found near her body was a second corpse — later identified by dental records as an 18-year-old Orlando woman, Laura Lynn Harberts.
Harberts had been raped and tortured, investigators said.
In 1976, Joseph ‘’Crazy Joe’’ Spaziano, an Outlaw motorcycle gang member and one of Central Florida’s most notorious killers, was convicted of Harberts’ death. He was not charged in the death of the second woman.
Spaziano is currently serving a life sentence in a southwest Florida prison.
In a video published on its Facebook page, the Sheriff ’s Office revealed that isotope DNA testing, which can track a person’s geographic origin, has determined that the unidentified girl was likely from the Pacific Northwest.
Investigators also hope a ring found near the girl will provide clues — a whitegold ring with an Alexandrite stone, which is a June birthstone.
Anybody with information is asked to call the Seminole County Sheriff’s at 407-665-6650. Office