Cold case: Decades-old blood drop leads to man's arrest in in-laws' unsolved murders, police say

The couple had been stabbed to death and there was no sign of forced entry. -- A single drop of blood has led to the arrest of a suspect in the unsolved 1989 murders of Catherine and George Peacock in Danby, Vermont, police said and CNN reported.

George, 76, and Catherine, 73, were killed in their residence in September 1989, according to the Vermont State Police website. The couple had been stabbed to death and there was no sign of forced entry.

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Police announced in a news release on Thursday that they had finally arrested a suspect in the case after decades of investigation involving detectives and cold-case specialists. The suspect, Michael Anthony Louise, 79, was arrested at his home in Syracuse, New York, on two counts of second-degree murder and is being jailed in New York pending extradition to Vermont.

CNN was unable to determine if Louise has an attorney.

Louise was married to one of the Peacocks' daughters at the time of the murders, according to the news release. He was identified as a suspect just two weeks after his in-laws were killed -- but investigators were unable to establish a "conclusive link" to the murders, said police.

But in May 2020, DNA testing confirmed that a drop of blood found inside Louise's car belonged to George Peacock. The blood had been previously tested but the results were inconclusive, according to the release. Advances in forensic technology over the past decades allowed investigators to match the blood to George, police said.

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