Thanks to an amateur detective and a discarded coffee cup, America’s top murder case is solved after half a century

Facts of December 5, 1975: An uncle and aunt found the lifeless body of 19-year-old Lindy Sue Beachler in the apartment of their newlywed niece in Manor Township, a small town between Baltimore and Philadelphia in the northeastern United States. States.. “A horrific scene,” the aunt later called it: Biechler was found dead on the floor with 19 stab wounds throughout his body.

Police have been in the dark for decades. A laundry list of suspects was investigated, 300 people were interrogated, there was a chilling letter from someone who (falsely) claimed to be guilty, the public was asked for help, even psychologists were called in: all to no avail. “I’ve been praying every night for the last 30 years that there’s justice for her death,” her mother, Eleanor Keesy, said in 2005, still in disbelief. “God, it might come one day.”

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The same year, with the help of Behavioral Analysis Division FBI – World famous through the movieThe silence of the sheep‘ – Established a Task Force on Offender Profiling. A man who knew Beachler committed the murder in a fit of rage.

With that knowledge in mind, he was inspired by CC Moore, a researcher at the DNA Research Institute Cold casesSearching the Internet. In newspaper archives and other public databases, he found David Sinopoli, a now 68-year-old Pennsylvania man…who in 1974 lived in the same building as Lindy Sue Beachler.

Coffee cup

U.S. officials are currently refusing to release more details about Sinopoli, and how and why they believed an amateur detective like Moore would put them on the right track 50 years after the murder.

The truth is that Sinopoli was shadowed by agents while on a trip with his wife in February. At the Philadelphia airport, they found him throwing a coffee cup in the trash. A file they quickly retrieved from the trash, so they were able to match Sinopoli’s DNA to that of Beachler’s killer.

With success: The Lancaster County prosecutor announced Wednesday that Sinopoli was the same person and was arrested Sunday. “Lindy Sue Beechler’s life was brutally ended when she was 19 years old. 46 years later, David Sinopoli’s arrest is the beginning of a case. We hope the family can find some peace after 46 years without answers.