DNA ties inmate to '81 murder

The mystery surrounding a 25-year-old murder case ended Thursday, prosecutors said, as they charged an already-imprisoned man with the crime.

Clarence Trotter, serving a life sentence in Stateville Correctional Center for another killing, was charged Thursday with the 1981 murder of Marilyn Dods, a 21-year-old Lincoln Park woman whose slaying shocked the city and devastated her family.

"I had pretty much given up hope that anything was going to happen," said Chris Dods, the victim's brother. "I just figured it was another one for the bad guys."

According to prosecutors, advances in DNA technology enabled them to link Trotter to the crime. Investigators first discovered a match in October 2005. Further testing and an investigation proved Trotter was Dods' assailant, they said.

Found by boyfriend

Dods had recently graduated from Georgetown University and moved to Chicago in 1981 to start a banking job at the Northern Trust, according to assistant state's attorneys Dan Weiss and Mark Ertler. She rented an apartment at 525 W. Arlington. Her boyfriend, Richard Stevens, moved to Chicago to be with her.

"The two had been seeing each other exclusively and had been talking about marriage," Weiss said.

On Sept. 20, 1981, Dods planned to attend her Episcopal church. Stevens made plans to meet her later. When she didn't show up, he went to her apartment and found it had been ransacked. Then he went to the bathroom and found Dods.

Convicted in mom's murder

She lay in the bathtub, her arms bent behind her back, a white gym sock around her mouth held in place by a piece of string. A small television set was on top of her. She had been raped. The cause of death was drowning.

"You just go numb initially. It was really hard to understand," Chris Dods said.

The murder hit Dods' father Lou the hardest, he said. Lou Dods doted on Marilyn, the baby of the family with three older brothers. The father died in 2001.

In 2005, prison officials took Trotter's DNA under a state law requiring samples be taken from all felons, Ertler said. Investigators also put samples from the Dods rape kit into the DNA database, called CODIS, he said. The samples matched.

Trotter, 48, was in State-ville for the 1986 murder of Betty Howard, who was kidnapped on her way to a birthday party for her 2-year-old son. She was found tied to a radiator, having been stabbed and shot. A jury convicted Trotter in 1988, but the Illinois Appellate Court ordered a new trial, saying the police had improperly obtained his confession. Trotter was convicted again in 1994.

"As long as he's locked up and kept away from other people, that's the most important thing of all," Chris Dods said.