Pamela A. Maurer was 16 when she left a friend’s house on the night of January 12, 1976, to buy a soft drink and never returned. Her body was found the next morning face down in a snowbank, fully clothed with her purse nearby, along College Road near Maple Avenue in west suburban Lisle. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled; a rubber hose found near the body was believed to be the ligature.

Investigators preserved biological evidence that kept the case alive for decades. In 2019 crime-scene DNA was run using genetic genealogy, leading detectives to a suspect’s family tree. After exhuming the suspect’s remains, officials reported on January 13, 2020, that the recovered DNA matched that individual. The man identified was Bruce Everitt Lindahl, who had died in 1981; no arrest was possible. Authorities described Lindahl as a likely repeat offender linked by pattern and DNA to other attacks and killings from the late 1970s.