DNA Links Two Brutal Mysteries

Aug. 28, 2002 -- Billboards along an Arkansas highway that show a murder victim asking "Do You Know Who Killed Me?" may be nearer to getting an answer after police linked the case to another slaying on the other side of the country.

Kristin Laurite, 25, was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death on Aug. 25, 2000, after she pulled her overheating 1971 Volkswagen bus into a rest stop on Interstate 40 near Morrilton, Ark., on her way to a job as a schoolteacher in California.

Jackie Travis, a 49-year-old disabled woman who lived briefly near Newport, Ark., was slain in her home in a downtrodden part of Merced, Calif., and found by a former roommate on Dec. 7, 2000.

Arkansas police announced Tuesday that DNA evidence recovered from both crime scenes matched.

"These two homicides were committed by the same person," said Carl Byrd, a special agent with the Arkansas State Police, at a news conference near where Laurite's body was found.

"What that has done, that has increased the evidence pool of the investigation," he said, adding that there were also clues beyond the DNA that linked the cases, although he declined to elaborate.

"There are some similarities to the crime scene but we're not at liberty to discuss the crime scene information right now," he said.

A Serial Killer?

Police also said they were investigating whether the killings could be the work of a serial predator, although they said they did not have enough evidence to support such a theory.

Conway County, Ark., Sheriff Mark Flowers said there are similarities between Laurite's death and the 1994 murder of another woman in Morrilton. The victim in that case remains unidentified. She was found near train tracks a few miles from where Laurite was killed.

"I don't believe this is the first time this person has killed and I don't believe it will be the last," Flowers said.

"One thing that I think all three of these victims had in common was the vulnerability," he said.

Merced police Detective Curt Gorman told The Associated Press the DNA collected from the Travis killing was not complete enough to be submitted into the national database.

The match to the Laurite killing was made after Los Angeles County sheriffs compared genetic samples not in the national database with the Laurite sample.

More Cases Probed

Gorman has refused to release details of the Travis case since her death, but said she was not stabbed to death. He thinks the killer may have known Travis.

"Somebody just passing through wouldn't make it to that neighborhood. It's off the beaten path," Gorman said. "And it never seemed random to me."

Merced police are interviewing other residents with Arkansas connections.

"My gut feeling is that this is possibly a past acquaintance of hers," Gorman said.

He said he couldn't label the suspect a serial killer yet, either, but that several unsolved cases in the area in the early 1990s could be connected to the Laurite and Travis killings. He said DNA samples from those cases would be tested and compared to recent findings.

Laurite's killing attracted national headlines after her parents paid for billboards near the murder scene asking for help in the case.

Laurite, orginally from Scotch Plains, N.J., was found nude near a pond not far from the rest stop by a trucker who followed her two dogs to the corpse. Her parents last heard from her at about 2 p.m. the day she died.

ABC affiliate KATV contributed to this report.