Photo: San Diego County Sheriff's Department
The San Diego County Sheriff's Department solved a nearly 34-year-old cold case this week. According to FOX5, the department used investigative genetic genealogy to identify a suspect in the East County murder of Diane Dahn in 1988.
“It’s been a long process,” Victoria Dahn-Minter, Diane’s sister, said Wednesday, March 16. “I didn’t think I was going to do this. I didn’t think anything was ever going to come of this. I thought I myself was going to go to my grave not knowing.”
On May 2, 1988, Dahn was discovered by a coworker stabbed to death inside her bedroom after she didn't show up for work at the San Diego Transit Corporation. The department said Dahn's 2-year-old son was found wandering around their apartment complex.
Homicide detectives kept working on his mother's case by matching her murderer's DNA samples with samples from commercial genealogy databases. Eventually, it led them to suspect Warren Robertson.
Detectives said Roberston died in 1999 who was an Arkansas native and spent his younger years in the San Diego area. In 1988, he lived in the same apartment complex as Dahn. Investigators said he left his family and moved to Lakeside right after Dahn's murder.
DNA testing found that Robertson was the donor of DNA found from samples taken from Dahn's fingernails and a hair that was found in her hand.
To read the Sheriff's Department's full press release on the cold case, click here.