DNA links inmate to 1982 slaying of 14-year-old girl
BOISE – Ada County investigators say a blood test matched to the DNA of a Utah inmate bolsters their investigation into the 1982 slaying of a 14-year-old Boise girl.
Test results that came back Friday showed a positive link to the DNA of Wesley Allen Tuttle, a 55-year-old man serving a life sentence for an unrelated 1983 murder, with bodily fluids found on the victim, according to Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney.
Raney told the Idaho Statesman on Monday that the blood test is another piece of evidence that he believes ties Tuttle to the death of Lisa Chambers, a developmentally disabled girl who was sexually assaulted and strangled with a shoelace. Chambers was reported missing on Nov. 11, 1982, while walking to school, and her body was discovered weeks later in a cornfield near the Western Idaho Fairgrounds.
Last month, Raney announced that a saliva DNA test entered into a national database identified Tuttle as a suspect in the rape and slaying of Chambers, a case that has confounded detectives for decades.
A girl fitting Chambers’ description was seen near the fairgrounds next to a white truck registered to Tuttle on the day after Chambers disappeared. But the woman who wrote the license plate number down and called in the tip in 1982 now has dementia and cannot testify against Tuttle if he is charged in the case.
Since news of the saliva test, Raney said detectives have been searching the Treasure Valley for anyone else who may have seen Tuttle and the girl together or have information about the case. So far, detectives have failed to turn up any witnesses, Raney said.
Tuttle is a former long-distance trucker who lived in the same Boise neighborhood as Chambers and was mentioned at least once in the original police reports as a person of interest in the investigation.
Though the girl’s route to school passed Tuttle’s neighborhood and Tuttle had recently been released from prison, detectives dismissed the tip as implausible because Tuttle had no connection to her family and because he had been seen so far from where her body was discovered, Raney said during a press conference last month. It isn’t known whether detectives interviewed him at the time.
After Chambers’ parents reported her missing, a high-profile, two-week search ensued that ended when her body was found Nov. 25 by two pheasant hunters.
Less than a year later, Tuttle, working a long-haul trucking job, came upon 21-year-old Sydney Anne Merrick standing beside her overheated car along a Utah highway. He gave her a tow, then stabbed her to death and left her body in her car, according to news accounts of the crime.
Tuttle is serving up to life in prison for Merrick’s killing; he is next eligible for parole in 2009.
Raney said he expects the investigation to be completed in the next few weeks and sent to Ada County Prosecutor Greg Bower, who will decide whether to file charges against Tuttle.