DNA evidence helped police identify a 52-year-old suspect in a cold case involving the alleged sexual assault and murder of an 81-year-old woman in 1989.
Police arrested the Kinau Street man at the main police station at noon Friday on suspicion of first-degree sexual assault and second-degree murder. He remained in police custody Saturday afternoon, awaiting charges.
Edith Skinner was found by a resident manager in unit 706 of the Makua Alii housing complex on Kalakaua Avenue on July 25, 1989, after friends didn’t see her at breakfast and worried about her well-being because of her age.
Police said Skinner died about 2 a.m. that day and a man, described as 19 to 25 years old, 5 feet 8 inches tall with a slim build and curly, short black hair, was seen leaving her unit about 5 a.m.
Nothing happened in the case for 17 years until police reopened it in 2006 after finding new evidence.
"Nothing will bring my mom back," Skinner’s son Steve said in 2006. "But people that do things like this need to suffer the consequences. It is an unforgiveable act."
Skinner was working in California at the time of the death of his mother, a former Ziegfeld dancer who was born in New York City. He said in 2006 that he was initially told by detectives that there were very few leads and police were going by the word on the street. He also said he recalled his mother’s death every time there was a murder in a television show and wished there was DNA technology in 1989.
Police did not provide details on Saturday of the evidence, recovered through DNA technology, that led to the arrest.
Former Honolulu Chief Medical Examiner Kanthi De Alwis, who performed Skinner’s autopsy, said the case stayed in the back of her mind because it remained unsolved. She said she was pleased police were able to get a DNA match with evidence from the Medical Examiner’s Office.
"The fact that they had a DNA match with the physical evidence was very promising to have justice," she said.
De Alwis said Skinner didn’t have many external injuries, but one black hair found on Skinner’s body that wasn’t from Skinner and faint bruising around the neck gave De Alwis a hunch to do a full autopsy back in 1989. The exam showed Skinner was strangled, De Alwis said.
"Internally, we collected some samples," she said. "I think that was what was tested and had a positive hit."
She said the samples given to police at the time of the autopsy were of biological fluids from a perpetrator.
The man police arrested Friday has eight previous convictions, mostly for misdemeanor offenses, such as driving without a license, drunken driving and contempt of court, according to the state Criminal Justice Data Center. He was sentenced to five years in prison for a burglary conviction in 1984.
