DNA evidence and volunteer genealogist help name girl’s killer from 1964 case

An image of Marise Ann Chiverella at the news conference (AP)

DNA evidence and a 20-year-old genealogy expert helped US state police identify the man who abducted, raped and murdered a young girl in a Pennsylvania coal town nearly six decades ago.

Officers exhumed the long-dead assailant’s body last month and said his profile precisely matched DNA left on the jacket of the victim, nine-year-old Marise Ann Chiverella, who was snatched on the morning of March 18 1964 as she walked to school in Hazleton, about 80 miles north of Philadelphia.