READING, Pa. — Authorities have solved one of Berks County's cold case homicides, identifying the now-deceased man who they said killed a woman more than three decades ago.
The suspect, Scott Grim, died of natural causes in 2018, 30 years after he killed Anna Kane and dumped her body alongside the Ontelaunee Trail, near Route 662, in Perry Township, authorities announced during a news conference in Reading on Thursday.
Kane, then 26 of Birdsboro, was found beaten and strangled with bailing twine on the afternoon of Oct. 23, 1988.
Sixteen months later, in February 1990, detectives got their first big break in the case, when the Reading Eagle received an anonymous letter from a "concerned citizen" in response to a front-page story it ran about the unsolved homicide.
Investigators said intimate details contained in that letter led them to believe that the person who wrote it was the person who killed Kane.
DNA tests confirmed that suspicion. They revealed that DNA evidence collected from the clothing Kane was wearing when she died matched DNA on the letter's envelope.
"Recently, we did genetic genealogy, which was completed by Parabon NanoLabs based out of Virginia," said Tpr. Daniel Womer, the case's lead investigator. "They were able to determine that a possible suspect was Scott Grim."
Womer said the state police lab then matched a direct sample of Grim's DNA to the DNA on Kane's clothing and the 1990 letter sent to the Reading Eagle as well as letters from a 2002 harassment case involving Grim in Exeter Township.
Anna Kane
"The fact that he is deceased, he will never face justice as we all would hope for this homicide, but we solved it," said Berks County District Attorney John Adams. "We gave some closure to the family."
Grim was a native of the Hamburg area, and authorities said their investigation remains active, as they dig deeper into where the suspect lived and worked and who his friends were.
"There's a lot of questions that aren't going to be, unfortunately, answered just because he is deceased," Womer said, "but if people reach out that would have known him or known if he had ever met her. I mean, the people we've talked to didn't recognize the name, you know, the victim's family and friends and stuff, but that doesn't mean there wasn't some connection that we just haven't figured out yet."
Adams reminded the public on Thursday that Berks County has dozens of other cold case homicides still on the books and urged anyone with information to come forward.
"Not every case is going to have a great DNA profile, but someone out there has some information, and we're never going to stop looking, as the Pennsylvania State Police displayed in this case," Adams said. "They're never going to stop."
Crime Alert Berks County offers a cash reward of up to $10,000 for information that leads to an arrest.
