After more than 53 years the family has finally gotten a major development in Mary and Maggie Jenkins' case. Police announced this week that DNA and genetic genealogy work identified David Allen Snyder as the suspect in the sisters' 1973 killings. Investigators said they updated a degraded male DNA profile, used genealogy to build a family tree, and then confirmed the ID after a relative’s sample was submitted for testing. Snyder reportedly lived in the Keys in the early 1970s and died in Idaho on Oct. 28, 2008, so he was never arrested or tried.
It sounds like detectives kept pushing the evidence thru every new tech advance and it paid off, even if it took decades. Cuz the suspect is deceased there won't be a criminal trial, but I hope this gives the family answers and the closure they've been waiting for.
JB , Absolutely, it’s remarkable work by the detectives to keep pushing the evidence over the decades; finally naming a suspect after 53 years can at least give the family some answers even though there won’t be a trial. 🙏
Finding some semblance of an answer after half a decade is incredible work on the part of the detectives...hoping this can bring some sort of peace for the family.
Mary Jenkins was 16 when she and her older sister, Marguerite Maggie Jenkins, disappeared while hitchhiking from Stock Island, just outside Key West, on May 2, 1973. The sisters were last seen together that day and never returned to New Jersey.
A local resident found their bodies on May 3, 1973, in a wooded area near U.S. Highway 1 at Mile Marker 99.5 in Key Largo, about 100 miles north of where they had been seen. Both were severely beaten and suffered gunshot wounds; their clothing had been disturbed and their bodies were partially concealed with sticks, leaves, and dirt. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office opened a homicide investigation but was unable to identify a suspect and no arrests were made.
The killings devastated the Jenkins family. Their sister Sarah Jenkins Barlow later described traveling to Florida with their mother and her future husband and conducting their own search for answers.
Did anyone in the Keys in May 1973 remember seeing the sisters hitchhiking or notice anyone who might have followed them?
