LISLE, IL — It's been exactly 44 years since 16-year-old Pamela Maurer was found sexually assaulted and murdered near the intersection of College Road and Maple Avenue in Lisle. Decades later, authorities have finally identified her killer — a man they believe was a likely serial killer responsible for other deaths between 1974 and 1981.

DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin announced Monday that police used investigative genetic genealogy to identify the murderer as Bruce Lindahl of Aurora. He died in 1981. Berlin said this marks the first case in Illinois in which investigative genetic genealogy was used to solve a murder. The first major case solved in a similar way was that of the Golden State Killer. In 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was charged in a series of killings that terrorized California between 1974 and 1986.

Disappearance and Murder of Pamela Maurer Maurer, of Woodridge, was reported missing on Jan. 12, 1976, after leaving a friend's house. Her body was later found on the side of the road by a passing driver, who initially spotted her purse.

Maurer's body had been left outside a guard rail, making it appear as if she had been hit by a car. The DuPage County coroner later determined that Maurer had died of strangulation. Police also found a 3-foot length of rubber hose not far from Maurer's body, according to the Chicago Tribune. Maurer's case was reopened in 1993 after police received new information, but no new charges were filed in the aftermath.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Maurer was among six women who were found slain between 1972 and 1976. After Maurer was killed, former Lisle Police Chief M.J. Wurth said repeatedly that he thought the case would eventually be solved.



How Police Identified Lindahl as the Killer



Berlin said that in 2001, biological evidence from Maurer's body was analyzed and the DNA was added to the county's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) system, but no matches ever came up. In 2019, experts used DNA phenotyping to determine characteristics such as the suspect's facial traits, eye color and appearance, and create a composite image of Maurer's killer. A public genealogy database was used to build a family tree to help identify potential new leads in the case. The information led police to Bruce Lindahl of Aurora, who died in 1981. Lindahl's body was exhumed Nov. 6, 2019, in an attempt to get DNA to compare with the evidence collected from Maurer's body.

