Indianapolis — For decades, the identity of an elusive man, identified as the "Days In" and "I-65" killer, escaped police as investigators traced the murders of three women in Indiana and Kentucky in the late 1980s. tried to solve.
On Tuesday, law enforcement officials said they had resolved the matter.
The Indiana State Police, along with several federal and local agencies, said that investigators have determined that Harry Edward Greenwell, who is now dead, was responsible for the rapes and murders of Vicki Heath, Margaret "Peggy" Gill and Jean Gilbert. .
Investigators have linked her through further DNA analysis to the sexual assault of a woman in Columbus, Indiana in 1990.
Greenwell died in 2013 at the age of 68.
The girls worked as clerks in motels along the I-65 corridor.
Police said Tuesday that there is a "distinct possibility" that Greenwell could be linked to several other unsolved murders, rapes, robberies and assaults. Sergeant Indiana State Police's Glenn Fifield said investigators are investigating whether he is linked to other violent crimes in the Midwest.
The man's identity books an investigation that spans 35 years. The search for the killer began in 1987 when Heath was attacked and shot to death in the back of a Super 8 motel in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
In 1989, two more women fell victim to the killer. Gill, a 24-year-old overnight auditor at Days Inn in Merrillville, was sexually assaulted and murdered in the early hours of March 3.
A similar horrific attack happened that night at another Days Inn, dozens of miles away. Gilbert, a part-time auditor at the Remington Motel, was also assaulted and assaulted. A motorist saw his body on the side of the road in White County. Police said both women were shot with the same .22 caliber handgun.
In 2010 the Kentucky State Police stated that the DNA found in Heath's murder was linked to the deaths of Gil and Gilbert. DNA also linked the same attacker to the 1990 sexual assault of a clerk at the Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana. In this case the clerk absconded.