PITTSBURGH Cold-file murders get new attention

A man was arrested in one of the killings.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Authorities are investigating whether a string of unsolved murders in western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia that date to the 1970s are related.
Police have already determined that two of four cases in which young women and teenagers were found dead in Washington County from November 1976 to May 1977 were unrelated. But authorities are comparing some of those murders to cases in Allegheny County and neighboring states, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in its Sunday editions.
Some police in Washington County feared the deaths of Susan Rush, 21, of Washington; Mary Irene Gency, 16, of North Charleroi; Deborah Jeannette Capiola, 17, of Findlay; and Brenda Lee Ritter, 18, of North Strabane, were the work of one person.
DNA evidence
With the help of DNA, police arrested David Robert Kennedy, 48, of Cecil, in December 2000 and charged him with Capiola's March 1977 rape and strangulation death. Since then, police have used DNA and other evidence to eliminate Kennedy as a suspect in Rush's November 1976 murder and Gency's February 1977 murder.
Kennedy's attorney, William Manifesto, declined to comment on his client's case.
State police Trooper Rebecca Loving, who worked with other members of a cold case squad on the renewed investigation into Capiola's murder, said she wants to look into the unsolved murder of 30-year-old Barbara Jean Lewis.
Lewis' strangled body was found in November 1976 -- about a week before Rush was killed -- about a mile from her Penn Hills home in Churchill, Allegheny County.
Police conducted hundreds of interviews and investigated a number of suspects, but never solved Lewis' murder, said Churchill police Chief Richard James.
In June 1977 -- shortly after Ritter's death -- someone raped and strangled 26-year-old student nun Roberta Ann Elam on the grounds of the Sisters of St. Joseph Mother House near Wheeling, W.Va.
Took blood samples
At the time of the murder, police obtained blood samples from a number of people. Last year, the Ohio County sheriff's office revived the investigation and are using DNA to search for Elam's killer.
Investigators told the newspaper they plan to obtain Kennedy's DNA profile and look into his arrest.
There are other murders in Ohio and West Virginia that look similar, Loving said, including a 1995 death that "reads exactly like" Capiola's death.
Retired state police Trooper Bernard Stanek said he had a "heavy feeling" the murders in Washington County and West Virginia might be connected.
"That was one of the things that always bothered me when I retired," Stanek said.