The match that solved a 65-year-old murder came from a job application.
Not a confession, not a witness, not a lucky tip. A fingerprint on a form filled out in 1959, compared against a fingerprint kept safe for decades. That’s one of the details that makes the case of Gloria Kowalewicz so hard to forget, and it’s why the Chicago police announcement this month landed the way it did.
Gloria was 8. On November 12, 1960, she was walking to church in Chicago when she was abducted. She was found killed in a forest preserve that same day. For 65 years, nobody was identified. Here is how police say the case was finally solved, told through the three pieces of evidence that mattered most.
Exhibit A: Her Clothing
Investigators in 1960 couldn’t do much with biological evidence. DNA analysis didn’t exist. But the clothing was kept, and that decision mattered decades later.
According to NBC News, the DNA technology that eventually cracked the case didn’t exist when Gloria was killed. In 2024, at Chicago police’s request, the FBI compared DNA from her clothing with genetic samples that people had submitted to family tree research websites. That technique is called forensic genetic genealogy. Instead of looking for a direct match, investigators look for relatives and build a family tree outward until it points at a person. It’s slow, careful work, and it took until July 2026 for investigators to say they had positively identified the source, based on the Chicago Tribune’s reporting as summarized by Hoodline.
Exhibit B: A Fingerprint Nobody Threw Away
Investigators in 1960 also lifted a fingerprint from the strap of Gloria’s purse. Nothing matched at the time, and the case went cold. But the print was preserved. NBC News reports that once the genealogy work produced a name, detectives had something to compare it against.
The Chicago Police Department said that identification was made through a fingerprint and DNA left behind at the scene. A preserved fingerprint and a DNA lead arriving at the same name is what turned a family-tree hint into something far more solid.
Exhibit C: A Job Application
This is the part that makes people stop. Police say the name belonged to Thomas F. McInerney Jr., who had joined the Chicago Police Department in 1959, a year before Gloria was killed. His fingerprints from his 1959 department job application matched the fingerprint on the purse strap, according to NBC News. Police also cited firearm evidence, according to the Tribune’s reporting. Fox News reported that the department worked with the FBI and Illinois State Police on the forensic work.
McInerney was about 24 at the time. He retired in 1987 as a detective after 28 years with the department, and he died in 2006 in Las Vegas at age 70.
That last fact matters most. He was never charged, and he never stood trial. Police say there was no known prior contact between him and Gloria, though his parents lived less than a mile from her family. And one question remains unanswered: why her. The department has said it can’t explain that.
What Police Said
The department didn’t dress up the news. In a statement reported by NBC News, Chicago police said McInerney should never have worn the CPD star, and called it devastating that he was never identified and held accountable while alive. The FBI said his DNA is in the national CODIS database and that it’s checking whether he might be connected to other unsolved crimes from the period.
Why This Case Is a Good Reality Check
Stories like this can make DNA sound like magic. The timeline tells a more honest story. The coat was sent to the FBI in 2024. Positive identification came in July 2026. The public announcement came in October 2026. That’s two years of work on a lead that began with a piece of clothing saved in 1960.
It also shows how many things have to go right: someone has to preserve the evidence, someone has to keep the case open, and someone has to compare the right prints. When all of that lines up, a mystery that outlived almost everyone involved can finally get an answer.
What an Answer Does and Doesn’t Do
It’s worth being clear about what this is. Chicago police say they’ve identified their suspect. There’s no trial, no verdict, and no chance for the accused to respond, because he’s gone. For Gloria’s family, an answer after 65 years is not the same as justice in a courtroom, and I won’t pretend otherwise.
But it is something. A name. A reason for the case file to finally close, and proof that a little girl who was killed in 1960 was not forgotten.
If you follow cases like this one, there are more unsolved histories and new breakthroughs in our Mysteries section.
