Investigators hit roadblock in unsolved murder case\By ANDREW McLEMORE
Mr. Norwood, 57, has been linked by DNA evidence to two murders: Ms. Morton and Debra Baker, who was found dead in her north Austin home in 1988. Chilling similarities between the Morton and McKinney cases — both women were found beaten to death and had household items stacked on their bodies — suggested a serial killer might be responsible. But DNA taken from Ms. McKinney, who was also raped, did not match Mr. Norwood, Williamson County Sheriff’s Office spokesman John Foster said. “I have the number one thing that anybody would love to have, which is DNA, but at this time it’s not coming back to anybody,” Sgt. Foster said. “I’m hoping at some point in the future it will.” The investigator said that Mr. Norwood remains a suspect in the McKinney murder. He isn’t responsible for the rape, but there’s still a possibility more than one person was involved, Sgt. Foster said. “He may not be on the playing field, he may not be on the sidelines, but he hasn’t left the stadium,” Sgt. Foster said. “At this point, everybody is a suspect, but I have very little to go on.” Ms. McKinney was found bludgeoned to death in November 1980. The 73-year-old lived less than a mile from where Ms. Morton would be found bludgeoned to death in bed six years later. Attorneys for Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife in 1987, were possibly the first to see a connection between the Morton and McKinney murders. In their efforts to prove Mr. Morton’s innocence by finding the real killer, the attorneys requested DNA testing of the McKinney case. District Attorney John Bradley successfully argued against testing, dismissing the idea that DNA tests could lead to the discovery of a “mystery killer.” Ms. McKinney’s daughter, Pat Stapleton, died January 1. Ms. Stapleton sided with Mr. Morton’s attorneys three years ago when they first requested testing of DNA and fingerprints from the McKinney crime scene. “Nobody should be able to get away with something like that,” she told the Sun in 2008. “Also, I thought because he has gotten away with it once or twice, he probably thinks he can do it again.” Sgt. Foster met on several occasions with Ms. Stapleton, who had been following the Morton case with the hope that the renewed investigation could result in leads to her mother’s killer. The investigator contacted Ms. Stapleton to inform her that the DNA tests hadn’t matched Mr. Norwood. “I’m sure that she only wanted for an investigator to knock on the door and say that a person or persons had been arrested for her mother’s murder,” Sgt. Foster said. “Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.” Robert Stapleton was 12 years old when his grandmother was found murdered. He and his mother, Ms. Stapleton, didn’t spend a lot of time discussing the unsolved case, he said. He and his sisters continued to bring her newspaper articles about the Morton case and its possible connection to other murders. “She felt like little to nothing had been done over the years,” Mr. Stapleton said. “My biggest regret was that nothing had been resolved before her death… just to know that there was some closure. The only grace we get is that she has returned to my grandmother in heaven.” Sgt. Foster said there is additional information on the McKinney case he still hasn’t shared because he has hope it will one day be used in trial against whoever is responsible. “I don’t view it as a cold case,” he said. “This case has been followed up on ever since I got the case in 2007.” |
Mark Alan Norwood, the man charged with the 1986 murder of Christine Morton, is not the source of DNA taken from the 1980 crime scene of Mildred McKinney, a Williamson County investigator said Monday.