When Edmond LaFave missed two days of work in February 1975, a worried friend headed to his North Park home to check on him.
The friend found LaFave on the bedroom floor in a pool of blood. The San Diego Union reported that the 34-year-old waiter at Little America Westgate Hotel had been badly beaten and stabbed multiple times.
Police investigated, but the case went cold for five decades until DNA and genealogy recently led investigators to a suspect.
On Thursday, approaching 51 years since LaFave was killed, San Diego police announced the arrest of 71-year-old Johnnie Salisbury of Syracuse in northern Indiana, roughly an hour northwest of Fort Wayne.
Police took Salisbury into custody Wednesday, San Diego homicide Acting Lt. Chris Leahy said in a news release. Leahy said he had been booked into custody on a warrant for his arrest in the homicide and is in an Indiana county jail awaiting an extradition hearing.
Leahy said various cold case investigators “have reviewed the case over the years, with no resolution.” He said the “culmination of the investigation” came when investigators used genetic genealogy and other forensic evidence to identify a suspect. He did not elaborate further on the evidence or the case itself.
The idea behind genetic genealogy is to take DNA from a crime scene and enter it into a publicly accessible genealogy DNA database in hopes of finding a close enough match to relatives of the unknown perpetrator. A hit helps genealogists create family trees that can help put a name to the unknown DNA.