Dead American serial killer links to the murder of Cincinnati teen in 1978 after DNA test

Prosecutors said that Ralph Howell, who died in 1985, raped and murdered a Cincinnati college student Cheryl Thompson, and are convinced he was a serial killer.

By Edward Era Barbacena

 

DNA technology has been used to link the rape and murder of a University of Cincinnati student more than four decades ago to a now-deceased man who authorities suspect may also have been responsible for three other murders in Ohio, prosecutors said.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters last week announced a posthumous indictment of Ralph Howell, who died in a 1985 auto accident, on aggravated murder and rape charges in the murder of 19-year-old Cheryl Thompson.

“I have prosecuted multiple serial killers in my time as prosecutor,” Deters said in a statement. “My office firmly believes he is another.”

Thompson went missing in March 1978 after leaving her home to meet her boyfriend at a bar in Oakley, prosecutors said. About two weeks later, a state natural resources officer found her body along the bank of the Little Miami River. Authorities said she had been raped and she died of asphyxia caused by strangulation.

This year, a DNA sample taken from Thompson’s body at the time of the crime was sent to a third-party genealogy company that narrowed the search to a specific family tree that included Howell, and further investigation revealed that he had been arrested in 1983 on an abduction charge.