Official: DNA Links Dead Convict To 49-Year-Old Murder Case

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - Authorities say they have identified the killer of a 23-year-old Harvard University graduate student who was sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death in her apartment nearly 50 years ago.

Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said Tuesday DNA testing points to Michael Sumpter as the suspect in the killing of Jane Britton in her Cambridge apartment in January 1969.

Sumpter has been linked two other killings of women in the Boston area in the 1970s and other sexual assaults. He died of cancer in 2001.

Ryan says investigators gathered a DNA sample from a male relative of Sumpter's to help close the case. It's the oldest case that her office has been able to solve.

Investigators do not believe Britton and Sumpter knew each other.

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