Progress in DNA technology helps to solve the decades of Joyce Casper’s murder – Aidaho News

Boyz, Idaho – Detectives never refuse to resolve Joyce Casper’s murder.

Even after decades without leading customers, the progress in DNA technology has helped detectives to resolve the cold case and bring a closure to the Casper family.

In 1987, the 65-year-old woman and business owner found dead blocks of her Vista Village business in Boise. Evidence shows that Casper was abducted, sexually attacked and then killed.

Casper’s case eventually popped up, but police said they had never stopped looking for her killer.

“This can be disappointing. I want to say that going through a cold case, as if you were looking through a needle in hay,” says Paul Jagos, a Boise police violence detective.

But police continued to gather through evidence until decades later, Casper’s unauthorized murder was re -opened in 2017. Police have reversed DNA evidence gathered at the scene of a private forensic laboratory.

“In the 1980s and before we didn’t understand DNA. We didn’t know that it could be used to identify people,” says Lisa Lewis, a forensic genealogist with Identifinders International. “Detectives in this case, when Joyce Caspar was killed, they thought very ahead and they gathered evidence and saved him and kept him properly.”

Keeping this DNA is what made Lewis and detectives, in the end, find lead to identify suspects.

“I remember getting this case and I was just so determined to find justice for her,” Lewis said.

DNA evidence has led to detectives to two sons of a person who lived in the valley of the treasures. This man was Frank A. Rodriguez, who lived in Boyz at the time of Casper’s murder.

“In the spring of 2023 The Police Chief of Boise, at a press conference in 2023.

Rodriguez lived in the area until he died of a self -inflicted firearm in 2007, according to police.

Related: 1983. A mystery of missing children pursues Boyz as detectives attached to the new DNA hope

Jagos finally managed to convey the news to Casper’s family about who killed their mother.

“It was something bitter, you know, because they knew what had happened to their mother all these years and never knew who was the suspect, whatever motive,” Jagos said. “They actually had no closure.”

Already three grown older children remember their mother.

“You know, she was very favorable to the people around her,” said Polen Casper.

They said they sometimes lost hope, but Roberta Casper Watson said it was a good feeling at last to close.

“To know finally for sure what happened and to be 100% sure, it’s like reading a book, you want to know how it ends. This was an important aspect of our lives and I find great relief in knowing that we know” , Casper, ”Watson said.