DNA Leads to Arrest In Deadly 2003 Home Invasion

(KDKA) PETERS TOWNSHIP Investigators say DNA evidence found at the scene of a deadly home invasion in Washington County helped them make an arrest in the nearly four-year-old case.

According to investigators, several men posed as utility workers to force their way into Shannon and Freda Dale's Peters Township home – where they beat the elderly man and literally scared his wife to death back in January 2003.

Freda Dale, 89, suffered a fatal heart attack that officials say was brought on by the trauma of the ordeal.

Today police announced the arrest of Mark Matthew Fisher, 22, in the case.

Fisher, who is already behind bars in Arkansas in connection with a home invasion there, is now facing murder charges for the death of Freda Dale, 89.

After the attack, Shannon Dale, then 91, told KDKA he heard his wife yell for him to call the police. Dale said the suspects then threw her to the floor, put tape over her mouth and started to attack him.

He "tried to punch my eye out," Dale said several months after the attack. "He tried to break [my] little finger and he couldn't do that... He got me in the hall there and tied my hands and I laid three hours."

At a news conference this morning, investigators told reporters that DNA from a cigarette found outside the Dale's home and on duct tape used to tie up Freda Dale matched Fisher's DNA.

Though investigators had been looking for Michael Marks and his sons, Sonny and Adam, since the violent break-in, today officials withdrew warrants for their arrests.

At this point, no other arrests have been made in the case; but authorities are still looking for several other suspects.