N. Whitehall man suspected in cold-case killing
Police say forensic genealogy identified him in death of dancer in San Diego
California authorities on Tuesday confirmed that a 75-yearold North Whitehall Township man is wanted in their state for the murder of a “go-go” dancer in her apartment nearly 51 years ago, providing a hopeful boost to her family’s decades-long quest for justice.
John J. Sipos was identified as a suspect through forensic genealogy in the Nov. 20, 1969, killing of 24-year-old Mary Scott, a spokesperson for the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
News reports from 1969 say Scott was found “apparently strangled” in her apartment, which was about a mile from her workplace, the Star and Garter Cafe in uptown San Diego. Neighbors heard screaming in her apartment around 2:30 a.m., according to a Los Angeles Times article, “but did not investigate.”
In a news release, officials at the San Diego District Attorney’s Office said investigators exhausted all leads in the case and it went cold. They did not give details about the genealogy methods used to identify Sipos, who was detained on an extradition warrant Saturday afternoon at his home in the 5200 block of Cobbler Road in North Whitehall.
Tanya Sierra, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, said more information will be
from Page 1 released after formal charges are filed.
Forensic genealogy is a somewhat controversial investigative tool that allows police to compare crime scene DNA evidence with genetic genealogy database information, often cracking decades-old cases, but also raising privacy concerns.
The technique, in which police often narrow down suspects based on relatives’ DNA samples, has led to an estimated 150 arrests in cold cases, including the 2018 capture of so-called “Golden State Killer” Joseph DeAngelo, a former police officer whopleaded guilty in June to the murder of 13 people and the rape of around 50 womenacross California during the 1970s and 1980s.
Scott’s daughter, Donna Wyble, said Tuesday that she wanted to believe that her mother’s killer would eventually be brought to justice. As years went by, however, she worried that time was running out.
The first ray of hope came in April, whenSanDiego detectives called Wyble to tell her they had narrowed down a suspect. The second one came on Saturday, after Pennsylvania State Police swarmed Sipos’ home and then called her to say they had picked him up on a warrant.
“We’ve been struggling a long time to see this get solved. I know we still have a long way to go, but this has been such a long time coming,” Wyble said from her home in Lafayette, Louisiana. “I’m just overwhelmed.”
Sipos is being held without bail in the Lehigh County Jail while awaiting an extradition hearing, which has not yet been scheduled. His attorney, John Waldron, said he is exploring whether to have Sipos evaluated by an expert to determine if he’s competent to stand trial.
Sipos suffers from diabetes and kidney disease, and has had three heart attacks, Waldron said.
Brutal assault
Scott had worked for just over a year at the Star and Garter, where patrons and other dancers called her Lucky. She took a cab to her home about a mile from the club at 2:15 the morning she was killed, a coworker told The San Diego Union in 1969.
When she didn’t arrive for work the following evening, another dancer went to Scott’s apartment and discovered her nude body sprawled on the floor near the door. She had been sexually assaulted, police said at the time.
Inside Scott’s apartment, there were signs of a struggle. The security chain had been torn from the door frame, chairs were overturned and an ashtray smashed, the San Diego newspaper reported.
A family’s quest
Scott’s younger sister, Rosalie Sanz, persuaded police to take another look at the case after reading about DNAandforensic genealogy, The San Diego Union Tribune reported Tuesday.
Wyble has very few memories of her mother. She was only 3 or 4 years old when Scott decided to leave Wyble and her sister, Christine, with their father’s family in Opelousas, Louisiana. Scott went back to California and took up work as a dancer at the Star and Garter Club.
The next the family heard, Wyble said, was when news of Scott’s death reached them by Western Union telegram. The Louisiana family took efforts to protect the Wyble girls from news about their mother, but they learned about everything in their early teens.
“My grandmother’s reasoning for keeping it all from us was that she didn’t’ want whoever killed our mother to know us and hurt us. She was trying to protect us,” Wyble said. “California life was totally different than country people in Louisiana. I mean totally different. California was the fast lane.”
Wyble said Christine was adamant about digging into their family’s past once they learned the truth about their mother. In 1989, she hired a private investigator to search for California relatives, but that December she died in a car crash and never saw the results of her efforts.
“After she was killed, I decided to pursue what she’d started,” Wyble said. “I hadn’t been that interested before. It was just the way I was raised. I had let it sort of fade away.”
By 1993, Wyble managed to set up a meeting with the San Diego family members. She remembers it being a “beautiful time,” and a window into the life of the mother she’d barely known.
The road ahead is a long one, Wyble knows, but she’s eager to see Sipos in court.
“A lot of people say that now we can find closure. And I don’t know if it’s closure exactly that I’m feeling,” Wyble said. “Especially because it’s my mother, I just want to know more and more. I want to know everything.
“There’s no telling what would have happened in our lives if mymother was still alive,” she said.
‘Grouchy’ neighbor
Sipos lived in Schnecksville for more than a decade, according to neighbors.
One neighbor who asked not to be named after learning about the criminal case said he was grilling hot dogs Saturday when several state police cars pulled into the driveway of Sipos’ tidy home.
Sipos surrendered without incident, and the fleet of state police vehicles quietly left the rural residence.
Neighbor Kate Kitz said Sipos struck her as “grouchy,” but said her heart really went out to the man’s wife, though she’s never met her.
“I can’t imagine what this might be like for her,” Kitz said.
California officials ask anyone with information about the case to call the Homicide Unit at 619531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.