The LaPorte County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday announced they’ve solved a 45-year-old murder. Police said prosecutors would have charged the suspect today if he was still alive.
Police said 31-year-old LaPorte resident Juanita Boyd was a loving and devoted mother to her 9-year-old son. So her disappearance in February 1981 was immediately suspicious.
Six days later her body was found in the trunk of her car in rural Coolspring Township. She had been strangled to death.
When her then-boyfriend was eliminated as a suspect, the case went cold. But as DNA technology continued to advance, Chief of Detectives Captain Andy Hynek reopened the case in 2013. Police worked with Parabon NanoLabs to match DNA collected from Boyd’s underwear with DNA from members of a family tree that Parabon developed through commercial genealogy searches.
Hynek said the lead suspect is Carl David Phillips. Phillips died in 2017 and had served time for purse snatching and burglary in the 1970s and ‘80s. He was in the area when she was killed and he knew the area from his childhood.
Police said her family attended the press conference but asked not to be interviewed.
