Using advanced DNA technology, the North Aurora Police Department has linked the 1979 murder of North Aurora resident Kathy Halle to suspected serial killer Bruce Lindahl.
The announcement linking Lindahl, who died in 1981, to the killing was made at a press conference Wednesday at the North Aurora Police Department headquarters.
North Aurora Police Chief Joe DeLeo said during the press conference that the case is now considered closed.
“After meeting with the Halle family, I saw their continued grief first-hand,” DeLeo said. “As we discussed the new developments in the case, I know this was not easy for the Halle family, and I sincerely hope that news of the closure of the case can bring them a sense of peace.”
On March 29, 1979, Halle left her home on Volks Court in North Aurora to pick up her sister at Northgate Shopping Center in Aurora, but never arrived, according to North Aurora Police Det. Ryan Peat.
He said investigators now believe that Lindahl abducted Halle, who was 18 at the time, in the parking lot of her apartment complex and drove her to the Fox River, where her body was later found.
Halle’s disappearance was treated as a missing person case for around three weeks until her body was found in the river, Peat said.
The case was then investigated as a homicide for decades by the North Aurora police alongside the Illinois State Police, but was eventually deemed a cold case due to lack of evidence, Peat said.
When new DNA technology became available in the early 2000s, North Aurora detectives collected DNA from people connected to Halle, but no links were ever found to her killing, he said.
A breakthrough came in late 2019, when the Lisle Police Department’s investigation into the killing of Pam Maurer found familial DNA evidence linking Lindahl to Maurer’s murder, according to Peat.
Based on those findings, North Aurora detectives began to look back at the Halle case in 2020, he said. They met with the investigators from Lisle and sent evidence from Halle’s killing for additional DNA testing at the DuPage Crime Lab, he said.
The DuPage Crime Lab found the DNA of two individuals within the evidence, but the DNA was too degraded to create a profile, Peat said.
In December 2022, North Aurora investigators learned that the Naperville Police Department had kept some of Lindahl’s belongings as evidence in a case there, and these belongings showed that Lindahl frequently visited Northgate Shopping Center, where Halle worked, he said.
Around the same time, Peat learned about advanced DNA technology with the ability to collect DNA from older cases, he said.
After discussing the DNA testing technology and the case with other law enforcement officials, North Aurora detectives drove Halle’s clothing to DNA Labs International in Deerfield Beach, Florida, in June 2023, according to Peat.
In August 2024, the department received the results of DNA found on Halle’s clothing, Peat said. Those tests showed the DNA was approximately 9.4 trillion times more likely to have originated from Lindahl, he said.
The lab was able to do a direct comparison to Lindahl’s DNA because of the work of the Lisle Police Department, Peat said.
DeLeo said he hopes the work on this case will help in the investigation of other cold cases in the area.
Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser said at the press conference that her office reviewed the facts of the Halle case and the DNA evidence. If Lindahl was still alive, her office would have charged him with first-degree murder, she said.
“I’m confident that, based on the work of the detective at North Aurora and all the scientists involved with the DNA labs, we would have finally obtained justice for Kathy,” Mosser said.
In a statement read by North Aurora Deputy Police Chief Joe Gorski, the Halle family said that revisiting the case has been “incredibly difficult” but that they are “deeply grateful to finally have closure after 45 long years.”
“Thanks to advancements in DNA technology and groundbreaking investigative tools, we are hopeful that other families won’t have to endure the same pain and uncertainty for so many years,” the family said in the statement.
The testing at DNA Labs International cost around $10,000, according to DeLeo. However, a $6,700 grant from the nonprofit Season of Justice helped to lower the village’s cost to below $3,000, he said.
Steven DuBois of DNA Labs International said during the press conference that one of the technologies used to solve the case was the M-Vac, which works by spraying a sterile solution onto a porous object such as clothing and then sucking up the solution, now mixed with any DNA left within the object, to get more DNA samples than a traditional dry swab would.
However, even with that and other DNA technology, the case would never have been linked to Lindahl if it wasn’t for the persistence of the North Aurora Police Department, he said.
The Halle family, in the statement read by Gorski, thanked the North Aurora Police Department and all other agencies and organizations involved in working on the case “for their dedication, persistence and for never giving up, even when odds seemed impossible.
“The kindness and respect shown to our family during this journey will never be forgotten.”
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
