Stephanie Isaacson’s Murder Solved After 32 Years

In July of this year, new DNA technology solved the Stephanie Isaacson cold case from 1989. While the killer has now been identified, no arrest could be made since the suspect committed suicide in 1995.

Those of you following the case on this blog know I’ve been writing about it for over a decade. 

Stephanie Isaacson

When the news broke that Stephanie’s case had been solved, media outlets everywhere covered it because of the technology used to identify her killer. Not only was the technology ground-breaking, the sample size of the DNA was the smallest ever used to identify a suspect. While all of that is good news, the fact that the suspect was no longer alive left many people feeling cheated out of true justice.   

Since news outlets have covered Stephanie’s story extensively, let me offer links to a couple of the most thorough stories:

For a summary of the facts around the case, from the Washington Post: “A 14-year-old girl’s murder went unsolved for 32 years. A lab broke the case using just 15 human cells”

For a deep dive into the case and how it affected the family, from the Review Journal: “Inside the Metropolitan Police Department’s record-breaking cold case”

I wrote an essay over on Medium about the years that I followed the case and how hard it’s been to get over being angry that no suspect will be brought to trial.

The technology used to solve the case is ground-breaking, and I’m sure we’ll hear more about it it in the future. I just hope that future identifications can be made sooner rather than later so suspects can be apprehended and families can have some justice. 

Many of the comments I’ve read center around the concept of closure in Stephanie’s case. Closure in this instance, according to Merriam-Webster, is defined as “an often comforting or satisfying sense of finality.” Can true closure happen when no justice is served? 

My other posts on Stephanie were published in 2007 and 2016.

Thank you to all of the people who have kept Stephanie’s memory alive.

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Photo courtesy of Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department