Had Scott Grim not sent an anonymous letter to the Reading Eagle/Times 32 years ago and licked the seal of the envelope, Berks County authorities may never have been able to link him to the 1988 murder of Anna Kane.
The newspaper turned over the letter — received in 1990 and signed only “a concerned citizen” —to Pennsylvania State Police because it contained details about the Kane killing, state police investigators said Thursday during a press conference at the Troop L headquarters in Reading.
The letter arrived in the aftermath of a Reading Eagle/Times front-page article in 1990 about the Kane murder that included a request for members of the public to provide investigators with any information about the case.
Troopers wouldn’t go into further specifics of the contents of the letter, which arrived about 15 months after the murder.
Kane’s body was found Oct. 23, 1988, along Ontelaunee Trail in a sparsely wooded area near Route 662 in Perry Township. The 26-year-old had been strangled with baling twine.
Investigators said they concluded the sender of the letter had to be the killer because the writer demonstrated intricate knowledge of the crime — details that had not been released to the public.
Although a DNA profile of an unknown male was later obtained from DNA found on the clothes Kane was wearing when she was killed, it didn’t lead them to a suspect.
The profile was entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, after the system was launched in 1998, but didn’t match the known DNA profiles of those convicted of serious crimes.
It took nearly 34 years, but investigators said they solved the case through genetic genealogy, a relatively new branch of DNA analysis.
Grim, whose name never surfaced in the investigation, won’t be prosecuted because he died in 2018 of natural causes at age 58.
Sgt. Nathan Trate, Troop L crime section supervisor, said investigators had a solid foundation with which to work in terms of physical evidence, which is a tribute to the original investigators who worked on the case. But it took about three decades for technology to catch up.
“All of that stuff was collected; it was preserved as it should be because they knew probably somewhere down the line what they collected could be that little piece of evidence of what they needed,” he said. “Well, here we are in 2022, and that little piece of evidence that they collected was exactly what we needed to solve this case.”
Trooper Daniel B. Womer, one of the lead investigators, said Grim’s name didn’t come up in the investigation until the lab identified him as a likely suspect through genetic genealogy, which he described as open-source tracing of the family tree of an unknown DNA profile.
Not every case in which DNA is found can be solved that way because it takes a sufficient amount of DNA-laden material to do genetic genealogy, he said.
“Luckily, for this case, this gentleman had mailed that letter, so saliva that had been sealed was a great DNA source,” Womer said.
Grim was about Kane’s age when he committed the murder, Womer said. Investigators know little about him, other than he was a Hamburg-area native.
He was arrested by Exeter Township police in 2002 for harassing a former business partner — a case in which he also sent a letter that was taken into evidence — but was never arrested for a crime serious enough that his DNA would have been entered into the CODIS database.
Investigators obtained a direct source of DNA from Grim — they won’t disclose the means and method by which they obtained it — that they matched to the 2002 letter to his former business partner, the 1990 letter to the newspaper and the male DNA found on Kane’s clothes, Womer said.
No connection has been identified between Grim and Kane, a mother of three who worked for years as a prostitute in the Reading area, he said.
Kane lived in the Reading area but had moved to the Birdsboro area shortly before she was murdered, Trate said.
Officials don’t know why or where she was killed. They believe she died about 12 hours before her body was found. She was last seen at Sixth and Franklin streets where she was likely seeking customers about 1 a.m. on the day she was killed.
Investigators previously said they believe she was killed somewhere other than where her body was found because her clothes were not wet following a rainstorm the previous night.
District Attorney John T. Adams said the clearance of the Kane murder is a testament to the tenacity of state police investigators.
“The tenacity that has been displayed here is very important,” he said. “There was patience. They didn’t stop. They kept looking. I am just so proud to be associated with discovering the perpetrator.”
The genetic genealogy services were conducted by a Virginia laboratory with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice grant through the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime & Delinquency, officials said. Adams said his office contributed a portion of the funding.
When they sought the funding, authorities assumed it would lead to a living suspect.
Even though Grim will not face justice as they had hoped, Adams said, they take solace in bringing closure to Kane’s family.
Womer said he felt good about informing Kane’s family that the case had been solved and that her relatives appreciated the news.
Adams said his office will continue to support efforts to solve cases using advanced technology, but said law enforcement also relies on the public.
“This is one cold case,” he said. “There are others out there and we need the help of the public to assist us to obtain leads.
“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 Pennsylvania State Police displayed in this case.”
Capt. Robert Bailey, commanding officer of Troop L. also commended the team for its diligence.
“Every victim, despite their background whether good, bad or indifferent, deserves closure,” he said. “I hope this sends a message to the citizens of Berks County that we are willing to do anything in our power to investigate any case that comes our way.”
