Murder convict linked by DNA to killing in Seattle in 1976

The Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — DNA analysis has linked a man convicted of killing a prostitute in 1977 to the unsolved strangling of a woman the previous year, city police say.

Police recently went to the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla to get a new DNA sample from Morris John Frampton for a second comparison with evidence from the killing of Agnes Myra Williams, whose was found in a wooded ravine in West Seattle on Oct. 19, 1976.

No charges have been filed pending completion of the second round of DNA tests, authorities said.

Frampton was convicted and sentenced to die for the beating and strangling of Rosemary Stuart in Seattle in 1977. He also was convicted of attacking two other prostitutes but was acquitted in the death of Iantha Buchanan Peters. Stuart and Peters had both been strangled and beaten.

Frampton's death sentence was overturned on appeal, and officials said he would be eligible for parole as early as March 2011.

Williams, who was not a prostitute, also was beaten and strangled, but police had few clues until a recent test of DNA from semen found on her body using laboratory analysis that was not available when she was killed, investigators said.

The analysis matched a profile from Frampton in a DNA database of convicted felons, according to documents filed in court.

Williams' daughter had been thinking about her mother's slaying and is elated that the case might finally be solved, police Detective Michael Ciesynski said Wednesday.

Gregory Canova, a former deputy prosecutor who handled the case against Frampton in the prostitute attacks and is now a Superior Court judge, said he was not surprised Frampton is under investigation in another killing.

"Most criminals who commit this kind of crime, it's very unlikely that you've caught them the first time," Canova said. "These crimes were too cold and calculated."