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With new advances in genetic genealogy, investigators were able to identify Scott Grim, who died of natural causes at the age of 58 in 2018, as the man who beat and strangled Anna Jean Kane to death and dumped her body alongside Ontelaunee Trail Road in Perry Township, Pennsylvania State Police said.
She was last seen on Franklin Street and South 6th Street in Reading at around 1 a.m. Oct. 23, 1988, police said.
The DNA evidence found on the Birdsboro woman's clothes matched that of an envelope containing a citizen's letter sent to the Reading Eagle in 1990, authorities said during a Thursday, Aug. 18 press conference.
This was in response to a story the news outlet had published on the murder.
Police were able to extract saliva from the anonymous letter at the time, which described intimate details about the crime scene that no one outside of the investigation would have known, according to authorities.
This prompted them to believe that whoever sent the letter was most likely the person responsible for killing Kane, who was also a mom of three and a known prostitute in the area.
Though police did not say how they obtained a direct sample of the Hamburg man's DNA, genetic genealogy testing confirmed it was a match this year.
He was arrested in 2002 by the Exeter Township Police Department in a harassment case where he had also mailed other letters to his former business partner, police explained.
Although the DNA from Kane's clothes was entered into a national crime database, it did not link back to Grim.
"The fact that he is deceased, he will never face justice as we all would hope for this homicide, but we solved it," District Attorney John T. Adams said to the press. "We gave some closure to the family."
Police say details surrounding how Grim and Kane crossed paths is still being investigated.
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