DNA Helps Las Vegas Police Identify Victim in 44-Year-Old Cold Case
19-year-old Gwen Marie Story was murdered in Las Vegas in 1979.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police
Forty-four years after a 19-year-old girl was murdered in Las Vegas, police have finally identified her as Gwenn Marie Story, who went missing in Ohio in 1979.
The Texas-based company Othram Labs used familial DNA to identify Story—bringing police one step closer to finding her killer.
Witnesses at the time said they saw Story enter a liquor store with a man about an hour before she was killed. The liquor store clerk described the man as six feet tall, thin, and with a different-colored mustache from the color of his hair.
Story reportedly traveled to Las Vegas from Cincinnati, where she lived, with two men who were also from Cincinnati in order to find her biological father in California. After Story’s murder, the two men returned to Ohio and are likely still living, according to investigator Terry Miller.
Miller added that it remains unclear whether the man Story entered the store with was one of the two men from Ohio.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is continuing to investigate the case and is urging “anyone with information about Gwenn Marie Story, or the two males she traveled to Las Vegas with” to contact their homicide section, according to a statement posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
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Story’s family also issued a statement after the new findings. “Finally after 44 years of not knowing what happened to our sister Gwenn Story, we have news that she had been identified,” they said. “We are looking for some closure on this case. Our family just wants some answers, we would really appreciate the help. Our family would also like to thank all the many detectives who have worked this case over the years at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. If it wasn’t for you, we would still be wondering where Gwenn is.”
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