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CHICAGO (CBS) — Barry Lee Whelpley, who was charged last week in the 1972 murder of 15-year-old Julie Ann Hanson in Naperville, has been extradited from Minnesota, and is due to appear in court in Will County on Wednesday.
Whelpley, 76, was arrested in Mounds View, Minnesota, one week ago, charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Naperville police said he was extradited back to Illinois on Tuesday, and is being held at the Will County Jail.
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According to Will County Circuit Court records, Whelpley is due to appear in court Wednesday morning.
Whelpley is accused of killing Julie on July 8, 1972, the day she was reported missing.
Her body was found later the same day in a field near 87th Street and Modaff Road in Naperville, along with the bicycle she had been riding to her brother’s baseball game. Police said she had been stabbed 36 times and sexually assaulted.
Julie Ann Hanson, 15, was reported missing on July 8, 1972. She was found stabbed to death later the same day, in a field in Naperville. (Credit: Naperville Police)
No suspect was identified in the case until a breakthrough in DNA analysis recently tied Whelpley to the murder, according to police.
A Naperville detective attended a convention of coroners and medical examiners in Las Vegas in 2019, and met DNA expert Colleen Fitzpatrick. They discussed the DNA evidence in the case.
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“It was degraded, it was low-level, it was contaminated with bacteria,” Fitzpatrick said.
Measured at a trillionth of a gram, her team at Identifiers International was hired to extract data from the DNA sample.
“The technology has become more sophisticated. The ability to handle very degraded samples has advanced,” Fitzpatrick said.
With that in hand, they ran it against an ever-growing database of genealogy results; data volunteered by customers from places like 23andMe
“Some people, many people, often, people take their data and put it on GEDmatch, a fraction of the people,” Fitzpatrick said.
Among that fraction were relatives of Whelpley, a retired welder most recently living north of Minneapolis. In the early 1970s, he lived in Naperville, just blocks from the Hanson family.
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“His DNA is in that database. So we are obviously continuing that investigation to see if he’s responsible for any other crimes,” Naperville Police Chief Robert Marshall said.
Barry Lee Whelpley is charged with first-degree murder in the 1972 stabbing death of Julie Ann Hanson in Naperville. (Credit: Naperville Police)
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