The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Genealogist, 20, cracks
DNA evidence and a 20-year-old genealogy expert helped police identify the man who abducted, raped and murdered a young girl in a US coal town nearly six decades ago.
Officers exhumed the long-dead assailant’s body last month and said his profile precisely matched DNA left on the jacket of the victim, nine-year-old Marise Ann Chiverella.
She was snatched on the morning of March 18 1964 as she walked to school in Hazleton, about 80 miles north of Philadelphia.
Her body was found that afternoon in a nearby waste coal pit. Authorities say she had been raped and strangled.
Police identified her killer as James Paul Forte, a bartender with a record of violent sexual assault, who died of natural causes in 1980 aged 38.
Forte, 22 at the time of the murder, had no known connection to the little girl or her family, officers said.
New DNA technology had established a distant family connection to Forte, and Eric Schubert, a college student and expert in genetic genealogy who had volunteered to work on the case, put together an extensive family tree that helped investigators narrow their suspect list.
State police made the announcement at a news conference packed with current and retired investigators – including the trooper who first probed Marise’s murder – and the little girl’s four siblings and extended family.
Her siblings called
Marise a sweet and shy girl who was learning to play the organ and aspired to be a nun.
Her sister, Carmen Marie Radtke, said: “We have so many precious memories of Marise. At the same time, our family will always feel the emptiness and sorrow of her absence.
“We will continue to ask ourselves: what would have been, what could have been?”
She said their late parents never sought revenge but justice.
“Thanks to the Pennsylvania State Police, justice has been served today,” she said.
A history major at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and proprietor of ES Genealogy, Mr Schubert developed an interest in the discipline as a young boy and had helped
other police forces crack cold cases using genetic genealogy, which blends the use of DNA testing with traditional genealogical research.
Mr Schubert was looking for a new case to work on when he ran across Marise’s story and offered his services to Pennsylvania State Police.
He was pleasantly surprised when they accepted and spent the next two years on the case, working side by side with investigators.
“The investigation that went into all of this work was probably the hardest genealogy task that I’ve ever faced,” he said.
“This was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. And it means so much to me that I was able to be on the team that could provide answers to the Chiverella family.”
At a certain point, he said: “I knew we were going to find the assailant.”
State police Cpl Mark Baron, the lead investigator, said it was believed to be the fourth-oldest cold case in the US to be solved using genetic genealogy.
Cpl Baron, who choked up as he spoke, called it an important day for Marise’s family and for a community that had long been haunted by her death.
“It’s a vivid memory for everybody who lived through this and it’s a vivid memory for everybody who grew up in this area,” he said.
“What happened to her ushered in a change in this community. Whether you like it or not, the way you lived changed after March 18 of 1964 in Hazleton.”