Following the identification of a man through DNA testing who was connected to killings in Westminster, Colorado, and Las Vegas, Nevada, over 16 years apart, law enforcement officials in Nevada announced on Wednesday that two cold cases had been closed.
During a press conference, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police stated that they were called to an apartment on the 1000 block of Monroe Avenue in May 1991 in response to complaints of a suspicious death.
Sherrie Bridgewater, 31, was found dead inside her apartment, and the officers talked with her friend and relative.
The unusual manner in which Bridgewater’s body was discovered led the homicide division to take over the case. An autopsy revealed that Bridgewater had been sexually abused and strangled to death.
Over the years, the homicide investigation team tried “relentlessly” to solve the case, but regrettably, it remained unsolved.
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A sexual assault kit that was acquired during the inquiry was turned in to the department for DNA analysis in 2013. Although they were unable to link the DNA profile to a specific person, the examination helped investigators create a suspect profile of the person they thought had slain Bridgewater.
Detectives entered the profile, and a hit in the CODIS database connected them to a second unsolved murder from December 1975 in Westminster, Colorado.
LVMPD detectives got to work working with the Westminster Police Department almost away after learning that a woman named Teree Becker had been discovered deceased in a field. According to Becker’s autopsy, she was sexually molested and strangled to death.