DNA tests bring charge against man in 2001 Tacoma killing

Joseph Anthony Neal’s past might have caught up with him this week.

Forensics experts used a DNA sample Neal was forced to submit following a 1995 burglary conviction to tie him to the unsolved killing of a 76-year-old Tacoma woman.

Based on DNA evidence gleaned from two hairs and a cigarette butt found at the crime scene, Pierce County prosecutors charged Neal with one count of aggravated first-degree murder Tuesday in the death of Elizabeth Crawford. The charge makes him eligible for the death penalty.

Police found Crawford dead in her home in May 2001 after her colleagues at Puget Sound Hospital grew worried when the receptionist didn’t show up to work her scheduled shift.

Medical examiners determined Crawford had been raped, strangled and beaten in her cluttered house on East I Street. Detectives theorize Neal, who had performed lawn work for Crawford, originally planned to rob her, according to charging documents.

Crawford was known to keep money on hand, and investigators found large amounts of cash and checks stuffed into books and crammed in piles of papers stacked around the house.

Neal, 32, has not been arraigned. He is incarcerated in Louisiana for violating his probation on a property-crime conviction in that state, Pierce County deputy prosecutor Gerry Costello said Wednesday.

“When he’s done his time down there, we’ll extradite him,” Costello said. “We’ll go down and get him.”

Costello said a decision hasn’t been made about whether Pierce County will seek a death sentence for Neal if he’s convicted.

Neal has denied killing Crawford, according to court documents.

He told a Tacoma police detective who flew to Louisiana to interview him last week that he had worked for Crawford but had never been inside her house, the documents state.

But, according to the court documents, he also told detective Brian Vold: “I knew you would be coming for me.”

In a Wednesday interview with The News Tribune, Vold credited the Washington State Patrol crime lab with solving Crawford’s homicide.

“They are so valuable to us,” Vold said. “Without them, this case never would have been solved.”

Even so, it took a long time for authorities to identify Neal as a suspect. The hairs and the cigarette butt helped them make the connection.

Evidence technicians found the hairs on Crawford’s pants during their initial investigation, court records indicate. The cigarette butt was found on the living room floor not far from Crawford’s body.

The original detectives on the case sent the hairs off for a special test called mitochondrial DNA analysis, an expensive, time-consuming evaluation performed by only a handful of forensic labs in the country. The State Patrol’s crime lab is not among them.

Investigators hoped to match the hairs to a DNA sample taken from a man considered a suspect at the time. The lab was able to establish a DNA profile, but it didn’t match the person of interest in the case, Vold said.

In the meantime, Vold took over the case. In November 2005, he sent the cigarette butt to the State Patrol’s crime lab for a different kind of DNA testing. Vold also asked forensics experts to match the DNA to a particular person he thought might be involved in Crawford’s death.

Again, technicians established a DNA profile but it didn’t match the person Vold had in mind.

But the technicians ran the profile through a state database holding the DNA profiles of other convicted felons. Vold said they got a match: Neal.

Neal had been interviewed early in the investigation but wasn’t a suspect until his DNA matched that on the cigarette butt, Vold said.

The detective made his case to prosecutors, but they wanted more. Did the hairs also match Neal’s DNA?

The report came back a few weeks ago. It found the DNA from the hairs is “fully consistent with defendant’s DNA,” according to court documents.

Deputy prosecutor Costello then swore out an arrest warrant for Neal, who has spent time in Oregon, Louisiana and Florida in the years since Crawford’s death.

Reached by telephone at her home in California, Kathryn Ries, Crawford’s sister, said she’s relieved someone’s finally been arrested.

“I’m happy in one way. It makes me feel a little easier,” said Ries, 72. “But it’s always upsetting to me to think about what happened. That poor little old lady didn’t deserve that.”