A crimeis underway for a 61-year-old man facing a first-degree crime charge in the death of a U.S. militaryrecruit who was strangled and dumped in an overgrown field in central us-regions37 years ago.
Thomas Garner of Jacksonville has pleaded not guilty to killing Pamela Cahanes. He was arrested in March 2019 after investigators developed a DNA profile in the cold case, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
The body of Cahanes was found on Aug. 5, 1984, two days after she graduated from boot camp at the Orlando Naval Training Center, the newspaper reported. She was naked except for a pair of white underwear. When the case was reopened in the 1990s, testing found semen on the underwear.
This undated booking photo provided by the Seminole County Florida Sheriff’s Office shows Thomas Garner.
(AP)
Investigators developed a DNA profile of the suspect and by 2018, they had the technology to build a “family tree” from that profile, the newspaper reported.
That led them to Garner, according to records prepared for the trial in Sanford.
Similar to the Cahanes case, investigators matched DNA found on Hicks’ underwear to Garner, who was stationed in Hawaii from April 1980 until October 1982.
