Cold Case: Kristin O'Connell

Reporting
Caroline Lowe

BURNSVILLE, Minn. (WCCO) ―

 

Kristin O'Connell was a college student from Burnsville, Minn. In 1985, she was visiting a friend in Ovid, N.Y. She went missing after taking a walk alone on Aug. 14. Two days later, searchers found her body in a cornfield. Her throat had been slashed.

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Kristin O'Connell was a college student when she was brutally murdered during a visit to upstate New York in the summer of 1985. She was studying hotel and restaurant management and hoped to someday work in Hawaii.

O'Connell was barefoot and alone late at night when she left a party at a trailer in Ovid. She wanted to take a walk. She never returned.

Two days later, searchers found her body in a cornfield. Her throat had been slashed.

Furthermore, two people who were seen walking behind Kristin have never been found.

From the start, it's been a tough murder to solve. It rained the night of her murder, which washed away a lot of evidence at the crime scene.

Now, a famed Dutch husband-and-wife forensic team with a track record of solving cases involving touch DNA would be willing to test Kristin's clothes at their lab in Amsterdam.

Richard and Selma Eikelenboom are willing to take the case, there are still some hurdles getting approval from New York State Health Department. The cold case detectives hope health department officials will grant a one–time exemption in this case to allow the testing by the internationally recognized forensic team, even though they are not certified in New York.

Minnesota's U.S. senator Amy Klobuchar, a former prosecutor, is helping on the Kristin O'Connell case. She has personally called N.Y. officials to urge them to give the green light for the DNA testing in Amsterdam.

SENECA COUNTY, N.Y. -- New York State Police hope some relatively new DNA technology and a newly released recording of a phone call can help them solve a 24-year-old murder case in Seneca County.

Kristin O'Connell
State Police investigators and others who were involved in the case from the start discussed the case in Ovid Wednesday morning. That's where the body of Kristin O'Connell was found in August of 1985.

O’Connell was 20-years-old, a college student and Minnesota native. She came to Ovid to visit a friend. She was at a party the night of August 14, 1985, but police say around 11:30 p.m. she left and went for a walk and never returned.

Two days later, her body was found in a corn field. She was nude and had been stabbed multiple times. State Police say despite a large amount of evidence, they've never been able to find the killer.

"The evening that Kristen was killed was probably one of the most horrific rain storms of the year and much of the evidence was lost, severely tainted at the very least. There was a tremendous downpour through the night, which changed things," said Jeffery Arnold, NYSP investigator. "We didn't have any great witnesses. We had nobody identify an exact car, an exact person."

Ovid was a much different place in 1985 according to investigators. The Seneca Army Depot was in full swing and the Willard Psychiatric Center was also located in Ovid. There were bars and restaurants at the time.

In the years following the killing, some 80 possible suspects were identified and talked to, however, no arrests were ever made. State police investigators, about a year ago, found an anonymous call made to police. The caller told them he knew information about the killing.

Here's a transcript of that call:

Caller: Hello.
Trooper Reyer: Hi.
Caller: Is this the State Police in Ovid?
Trooper Reyer: Yes, it is.
Caller: Listen to me, all right.
Trooper Reyer: Yep.
Caller: And, ah, don't interrupt me. Do you want the guy that killed that guy, or ah, that girl?
Trooper Reyer: Go ahead.
Caller: You look at , ah, ah, behind the Chevy, the green Chevy on, ah, Main Street in Waterloo and you'll find him. And if you open the trunk, if you open the trunk, you'll find what you want.
Trooper Reyer: Okay. A green Chevy on Main Street.
Caller: In Waterloo, and if you open the trunk. I'm getting out of town because I told him not to do it. I told him not to do it. I'm getting out of town.
Trooper Reyer: But wait a minute now. Okay, green Chevy.
Caller: (Hung up)

State Police say they have quite a bit of evidence in the case and hope to have some of that evidence tested. They are hoping to have it tested by a world renowned DNA expert based in the Netherlands, with a process called Touch DNA. It basically analyzes skin cells found at crime scenes.

However, there is a snafu in all of this. For the evidence to be tested by that lab, it has to be approved by the New York State Health Department. The health department, so far, said it would not approve the testing. Investigators say that's holding up their investigation. They feel if they are able to have some of that evidence tested for DNA that it could provide a break in the case that they need.