NORTH AURORA, Illinois (TNND) — The murder of 19-year-old Kathy Halle in Chicago 45 years ago has remained a mystery until now.

The North Aurora Police Department announced Wednesday that DNA found on Halle’s clothing was recently linked to suspected serial killer Bruce Lindahl.

Detective Ryan Peat said at a press conference: “This has been a long and difficult investigation, but today we are able to give the Halle family the answers they have been waiting for decades.”

Halle’s family said it was “incredibly difficult” to revisit the case, but they were grateful for closure after more than 40 years.

“Thanks to advances in DNA technology and groundbreaking investigative tools, we are hopeful that other families will not have to endure the same pain and uncertainty we have faced for years,” Halle’s family said in a statement police read during the conference. he said. .

Peat, who led the investigation, said authorities believe Halle was abducted and killed in March 1979 after leaving a North Aurora apartment complex to pick up her sister while the two planned to go shopping. Her body was found in the Fox River a few weeks later, Peat said.

Lindahl, believed to have killed nearly a dozen women and girls, was found dead in an apartment in 1981. Two years after killing Halle, he died while committing another murder, authorities said.

Police said the man accidentally severed a major artery in his own leg and bled to death while fatally stabbing an 18-year-old man in his home.

Had Lindahl still been alive, he would have been charged with Halle’s murder, State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser said.

“If Bruce Lindahl had not died in 1981, this case would have been heard in a court of law,” Mosser said. “His pattern of violence, combined with the DNA evidence we now have, leaves no doubt that he was responsible for Kathy’s tragic death”. “Although we cannot sue Lindahl, the family now knows the truth and, albeit belatedly, justice has finally been served for Kathy.”

At the time of his death, Lindahl was a suspect in the 1980 rape and kidnapping of Debra Colliander. Authorities believed Lindahl kidnapped the woman from a suburban shopping mall and raped her at her Aurora home before she ran away and called police from her neighbor’s house.

He was charged and released from jail after being granted bail. Colliander’s disappearance days before he was due to testify at his trial forced prosecutors to drop the charges in 1981.

In 1982, a few months after Lindahl’s death, Colliander’s body was found in a shallow grave by a farmer. It was not determined how he died as a result of the autopsy, but his death was ruled a murder.

Numerous photographs of naked women were later discovered in Lindahl’s apartment. His remains were exhumed for DNA testing in 2019.

In 2020, authorities announced that Lindahl’s DNA linked him to the 1976 drowning of 16-year-old Pamela Maurer, whose body was found by a motorist along a road in the village of Lisle.

Anyone with information about Lindahl or possible victims is asked to contact the North Aurora Police Department at 630-897-8705.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Associated Press contributed to this report.