Texas investigators made a breakthrough in a decades-old murder case — only for the suspect to die by suicide before he could be arrested, authorties said Thursday.
Cold case detectives from the Austin Police Department said in a news release that they were investigating the 1994 death of Bert Allen Mann, who was fatally stabbed to death on his kitchen floor after someone forced entry through a sliding glass door. Mann and the suspect appeared to fight, causing the suspect to bleed inside the home, officials said.
In 2005, detectives tested a blood stain from the scene for DNA and made a profile of an unidentified male. That profile was entered into the Combined DNA Index System, a national database, but no match was found. In March 2023, the profile was sent to Bode Technology, a company that does forensic genetic genealogy, which helps law enforcement identify potential suspects based on familial DNA evidence.