New DNA details in Diamond Turner investigation timeline

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The I-Team has learned that a delay in DNA processing was not the only reason a police investigation into the 2017 death of Diamond Turner took nearly three years.

After Arthur Hilliard was charged with murder early Thursday morning, Chicago police claimed that slow DNA processing by the Illinois State Police crime lab was to blame for the lengthy investigation.

CPD officials now tell the I-Team that they received the state's latest DNA report last March and issued a warrant for his arrest in October. But Hilliard was on the run for a probation violation and Chicago police said they couldn't find him until this week.

Illinois State Police officials tell the I-Team that Chicago Police submitted two sets of evidence for DNA processing since Turner's murder. Police sent evidence to the state lab in March 2017 and received that DNA report in January of 2018. Additional evidence was provided to the lab in November 2018 by the Chicago Police and that analysis was complete by March of 2019.

Chicago police said after detectives received that set of DNA results, they questioned Hilliard and he told them they found his DNA because Turner was his girlfriend. Police said Hilliard also pointed detectives to the 2017 I-Team report where he alleged while being secretly recorded by Turner's family that one of his roommates was actually to blame for her death. Police interviewed that roommate and determined that was not the case.

Chicago police have had a warrant for Hilliard's arrest in Turner's murder since October 2019 but were unable to locate him until this week.

The I-Team has also learned new details about the third murder under investigation by Chicago police for links to Hilliard. Investigators are studying the March 2018 stabbing death of a 66-year-old man in the city's Austin neighborhood. Authorities on Thursday had said the third case occurred in 2019, but the 2018 apartment killing is actually the one being linked to Hilliard.

In September 2018, as police investigated the Turner murder, Andra Williams was stabbed to death and left in a shopping cart in a West Side alley. Hilliard pled guilty to concealing that homicide after prosecutors said he was seen on security video wheeling the cart into the alley. Hilliard was released from jail on probation in January 2019 after being sentenced to less than a year in that case.