INDIANAPOLIS — For decades, the identity of an elusive figure, dubbed the “Days Inn” and “I-65” killer, evaded police as investigators tried to solve the slayings of three women in Indiana and Kentucky in the late 1980s.
Tuesday, law enforcement officials said they’ve solved the case.
Indiana State Police, alongside several federal and local agencies, said investigators have determined that Harry Edward Greenwell, who is now deceased, was responsible for the rapes and murders of Vicki Heath, Margaret “Peggy” Gill and Jeanne Gilbert.
Investigators have also linked him through further DNA analysis to a sexual assault of a woman in 1990 in Columbus, Indiana.
Greenwell died in 2013 at 68 years old.
The young women worked as clerks in motels along the I-65 corridor.
‘I-65 KILLER’: What we know about the suspect and the victims
Police on Tuesday said there’s a “distinct possibility” Greenwell could be linked to a number of other unsolved murders, rapes, robberies and assaults. Sgt. Glen Fifield of the Indiana State Police said investigators were continuing to investigate whether he’s connected to other violent crimes in the Midwest.
The man’s identification bookends an investigation that’s spanned 35 years. The search for the killer began in 1987 when Heath was found assaulted and shot to death behind a Super 8 motel in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
In 1989, two more women fell victim to the killer. Gill, a 24-year-old overnight auditor at a Days Inn in Merrillville, was sexually assaulted and killed in the early morning hours of March 3.
An eerily similar attack occurred at another Days Inn dozens of miles away on the same night. Gilbert, a part-time auditor for the Remington motel, was also attacked and assaulted. A motorist saw her body on the side of the road in White County. Police said both women were shot with the same .22 caliber handgun.
Kentucky State Police in 2010 said DNA found at Heath’s killing linked to the deaths of Gill and Gilbert. The DNA also linked the same attacker behind a 1990 sexual assault of a clerk at a Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana. In that case, the clerk got away.
Police on Tuesday said a DNA match to Greenwell was made through a close family member, returning a 99.99% probability, and credited the DNA analysis for the major breakthrough in the case.
“There are detectives in this room that have been involved in this for some form or another for literally generations. They’re owed a debt of gratitude we can never possibly repay,” said Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter. “I hope today might bring a little bit of solace to know that the animal who did this is no longer on this Earth.”
The reveal of the Days Inn killer’s name also provided some closure to the victims’ families about the identity of the person who murdered their loved one.
Kim Gilbert Wright, Gilbert’s daughter, said the families may never know why their relatives suffered the horrific fate, but said some justice was served in finally revealing the killer’s identity.
“I’d like to believe that whatever each of us defines as justice, or what each of us might define as closure, that we’re all now able to share the healing process knowing the long known attacker has now been brought out of the dark, into the light,” Wright, an attorney, said.
Who were the victims of the I-65 killer?
The case of the I-65 killer began with Heath’s horrific killing.
In February 1987, customers at the Super 8 Motel found no one at the front desk. The lobby was torn apart. The prospective patrons called the police to investigate the strange scene.
Police made the grisly discovery near a trash bin at the back of the motel. Heath had been assaulted and shot twice in the head. The bloody crime rocked the town of Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
Two years later, the killer carried out gruesomely similar attacks on the same night.
Gill, a 24-year-old night auditor at the Days Inn in Merrillville, was attacked and killed in the wee hours of March 3, 1989. Roughly 50 miles south, Gilbert, a part-time auditor at the Days Inn in Remington, was found shot to death on the side of the road by a motorist driving through White County.
Police determined they were killed by bullets from the same gun. Both motels had been robbed. In total, the killer swiped $426.
Gilbert was a working mother in the throes of business courses at St. Joseph’s College, an Indianapolis Star article reported. Gill loved to bake, paint and cross stitch. She worked her way up from being a maid at the motel to an auditor position.
Gill’s family displayed some of her cross-stitch pieces at her funeral, the article said, including one depicting the Last Supper, next to her coffin.
The women’s families told the Indianapolis Star months after the killing that they were still coping with the deaths – but not forgetting.
Gill’s parents at the time said they don’t speak about revenge – just uncertainty. Her mother called the lack of a suspect at the time a “mixed blessing.”
“In some ways, it’s peace not to have to look at someone. But you read about something else and you wonder ‘was that him, too?’” Anna Gill said.