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Hitchhiker's 50-Year-Cold Case Cracked By Ramapo College's Genealogy Center
After nearly five decades without answers, the 1974 murder of Mary Schlais has been solved, thanks to groundbreaking work by the Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) Center in Mahwah, NJ.
On Nov. 7, 2024, the Dunn County Sheriff’s Department announced the arrest of Jon Miller, 84, of Owatonna, MN, in connection with Schlais’s death.
Schlais, then 25, was hitchhiking from Minneapolis to Chicago when she was killed. Her body was found with multiple stab wounds along a road in Dunn County, WI, on Feb. 15, 1974.
At the scene, investigators collected a stocking cap t…