BOISE, Idaho — Thirty-six years after 65-year-old Joyce Casper was found murdered in her car, Boise Police are able to bring some sort of closure to her family.
Investigators were able to create a family tree through genetic genealogy from DNA left a the crime scene, which pointed to their suspect, Frank A. Rodriguez -- police then met with his family, obtained additional DNA swabs, and matched Rodriguez to the crime, BPD said. Even though Rodriguez died in 2007, BPD Capt. Matt Jones said that he is proud to finally give the family some answers.
Investigators are still working to determine if Rodriguez is responsible for any other unsolved crimes across the country.
Casper's body was found on Oct. 13, 1987, inside her car at Day Drive and Robert Street -- just blocks from the business she owned, Casper's Vista Hallmark and Gift Shop on Vista Avenue. Weeks before Casper's death, she had reported to police that a young man, possibly 17-25 years old with slick black hair tried to assault her at the store, but ran off.
Her murder "had everyone shocked," according to a 1987 article from The Idaho Statesman, and made surrounding residents anxious. Casper was known to work late hours, and the doors to the business were locked when police arrived -- BPD said they found evidence that she was likely abducted outside of her store, sexually assaulted and then killed. BPD Lt. Larry Jones told the Associated Press in 1987 that investigators did not have "a strong indication of the cause of death."
"There is no obvious instrument we could see. But the evidence found in and around the car led us to believe it was a killing," he said.
Thirty years after the murder of Casper, police reopened the case in 2017 and assigned two full-time investigators to comb through old evidence, conduct interviews and take DNA swabs. They sent the DNA found at the scene to Parabon Nanolabs, who developed a profile of the suspect -- a young Latino man with brown or hazel eyes and brown or black hair, KTVB previously reported. However, this didn't lead investigators to anyone specific.
Sgt. Justin Kendall with BPD told KTVB in 2017 that their suspect was also never listed in any crime database and had likely never been arrested. But, he probably lived in the area surrounding Vista Avenue and Kootenai Street at the time.
"(Investigators) didn't know what they were preserving back then, and now 30 years later, that evidence they preserved has come to a point where that's valid evidence to us, which at the time was not really relative evidence to them," Kendall said.
Two years later, another detective assigned to the case enlisted the help of the genetic genealogy company, Identifinders International, and created a family tree based off of the DNA in the system, a BPD press release stated.
Identifinders forensic genealogist Lisa Lewis started working on the case in October 2021. Lewis said she looked at various genetic databases to help narrow down the suspect pool.
Lewis said she gave investigators Rodriguez's name.
"I work down their family history to see who was living in the right place at the right time and who was in the correct age range to be either the unknown person that we found or the person who may have committed the crime," she said.
Eventually, investigators met with Rodriguez's family, tested their DNA, and determined Rodriguez was the man that killed Casper 36 years prior. Idaho State Police's Forensic Services also assisted in the case, a spokesperson told KTVB.
“Members of BPD’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) have spent years working to identify the person responsible for the death of Joyce Casper and close this investigation once and for all for Joyce’s family,” Jones said. “Justice has been a long time coming and we are proud and grateful to finally be able to give them some answers.”
Lewis also said working on this cold case was very rewarding work.
"When I'm working on this, I feel very driven, almost like Joyce was here with me the whole time," she said. "There's no closure, there's never closure, but just one step closer to peace. And I felt honored to be able to help her with that."
BPD is holding a press briefing on the case on Sunday at 2:30 p.m that will include statements from Casper's family. This story will be updated.
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