FORT WORTH (WBAP/KLIF News) – Almost 35 years ago, an 11-year-old girl vanished while taking out the trash from her family’s room at the Kensington Motel in Arlington.
The next day, June 28,1983, Julie Fuller’s nude body was found in the 200 block of Handley Ederville Road in Fort Worth. Her killer has never been found.
After decades of eliminating hundreds of potential suspects, investigators were able to get DNA evidence entered into CODIS but there were never any matches.
Fort Worth Police decided to try a new technology in hopes of moving the case forward.
The department reached out to Parabon Nanolabs and got a Snapshot DNA phenotyping report.
It’s the process of predicting a physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence.
The Fort Worth Police Department’s Detective Thomas O’Brien said the results have provided a much-needed breakthrough in the case.
“It’s a completely different way of investigating. Anything that’s new after 35 years is going to be a break through. Just finding out he’s Northern European. His skin color his eye color his hair color would almost immediately eliminate a number of individuals who you were never able to contact or who were persons of interest for any reason,” he said.
While the testing can’t predict the age or weight, it does provide specific descriptors that could lead to someone recognizing the suspect.
“The suspect is a white male, Northern European. He’s going to be light skin. He’s going to have some to many freckling on the face. He’s going to have blue eyes maybe with a little bit of green,” said O’Brien.
He said the department is confident in the accuracy of this type of testing.
“We’re hopeful with the company we’re working with and what they describe their accuracy as. They feel more accurate with certain traits than others. I think they feel confident in the eye color..the skin tone..the freckling the hair color. There’s a number of things they can’t predict. They can’t predict the age…which is a big thing for us,” he said.
The department has kept the family updated on the investigation. O’Brien said investigators reached out to the Fullers a year ago to let them know that they were going to have the lab conduct a DNA phenotyping test.
“He was definitely taken aback when he saw the composite for the first time,” he said.
O’Brien said he hopes that the images will strike a chord in someone that may know or have known the suspect.
“We’re looking for individuals who recognize this person who may be a family friend or family member… who they feel pretty confident that ‘Hey, this looks like an individual I know…and who lived in the DFW area or who still lives in the DFW area.’ Or, I have no idea where his whereabouts were in 1983 but it may have been here,” he said.
Anyone with information on this case is asked to call Detective O’Brien at 817-392-4338.
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