(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — More than 40 years after a man was murdered in northwest Indiana, police say they've caught the killer thanks to the work of detectives who are father and son.
John Blaylock was 51 when he was murdered in Griffith, Indiana, in 1981. Detective John Mowery Sr. was one of those initially on the case. It went unsolved and became a cold case.
In 2018, Mowery's son — Griffith Police Detective John MoweryJr. — reopened the case.
The younger Mowery learned that blood found at the crime scene was likely from the killer.
Griffith police said the blood was sent for genetic tests, and the results led them to a man in Eugene, Oregon. That's where Gregory Thurson was arrested for Blaylock's murder.
After being extradited back to northwest Indiana, Griffith police say Thurson is in the Lake County Jail awaiting court proceedings.
Region News Source reported on the ingenuity that led to the arrest, including the fact that Detective Mowery outsourced the suspect’s blood to a private company that does genetic genealogy investigations after it turned up no hits in the local database. Additional funding for this outsourcing was approved and provided by the Griffith Town Council. They were able to identify and narrow down a familial match to the suspect’s DNA profile.