The Virginia Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, a multi-million-dollar program designed to solve cold case sexual assaults and homicides through advanced DNA testing and forensic genetic genealogy, has helped close a 52-year-old murder case in Prince William County.
On Dec. 8, 1973, 33-year-old Shirley L. Washington of Washington, D.C., was found stabbed to death in Conway Robinson State Forest outside Gainesville. Though her estranged husband was long a suspect, he was never charged in her death. Clarence E. Washington died in 2013 at 68 years old.
Though the case grew cold, investigators never stopped working on closure, Virginia State Police said in a news release. Recently, new forensic testing through the Virginia Sexual Assault Kit Initiative and support from analysts with the Homeland Security Division’s Violent Crime Analytical Support Team helped finally pin Clarence Washington as the killer…