DNA links woman's killing 40 years ago in an Iowa hotel to a man who was found shot to death months later
CBSN
Investigators in Iowa used genealogical data to link the 1982 fatal stabbing of a woman to an Illinois trucker who was found shot to death in a shallow grave months later, authorities announced Friday.
Police in Council Bluffs, which sits on Iowa's western border across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska, believe Thomas O. Freeman killed 32-year-old Lee Rotatori at a local hotel in June of 1982. Rotatori, who had just moved from Nunica, Michigan, to Council Bluffs for a job, had stayed at the hotel for several nights while she looked for a home, authorities said. She was stabbed once and sexually assaulted.
According to a 2016 article in the Des Moines Register, Rotatori went boating with coworkers on June 24, 1982, and then stopped at McDonald's to pick up food before returning to the hotel. That was the last time she was seen alive.
