Michigan State University students help investigators solve a 40-year-old murder case
Four decades after a teenage girl was murdered in Michigan, Michigan State University students helped link DNA evidence to the man who killed her.
The body of 16-year-old Kimberly Loiselle was found on April 14, 1982. She had been dead for several days after being repeatedly raped, beaten, and strangled. The teenager set out on foot to try to get home from her boyfriend’s house more than three weeks earlier on March 20. Her sister says the teen had been driving around in the past and had made several calls to friends trying to get a ride.
Investigators tried tirelessly to find her killer, but the case eventually went cold.
The case was reopened when DNA became available
Cindy Arthurs is Kimberly Loiselle’s sister. She dedicated herself to tracking down her sister’s killer.
“About 15 years ago, I just started googling her name to see if I could find anything about her, and I found a couple of really old articles that didn’t have the right information,” Arthurs tells WDIV-TV. “It kind of bothered me not to find any information about it. It was like it didn’t exist. So, that’s where I started because I wanted to correct the misinformation… and then it just went from there.”
Michigan State University students are interested in the case
There was renewed interest in the case in 2022 when a group of Michigan State University students participated in a cold case internship in partnership with the Michigan State Police.
The students learned that a man named Charles David Shaw had been linked through DNA evidence to the murder of another young woman, Christina Castiglione, in 1983.
The students’ investigation showed that Shaw lived in the area where Loiselle was found dead a year earlier. They conducted an “estate audit” to match Shaw’s location to that of Louiselle at the time of her death and concluded that there were many opportunities for their paths to cross.
Their findings were submitted to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab for retesting, where a match was found. Once a sperm cell belonging to Charles David Shaw was found among the evidence collected from a crime scene 40 years ago.
Investigators say Shaw committed suicide in November 1983, a year and a half after killing Loisel.
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(tags for translation)MSU students solve 40-year-old cold case
