'I-65 killer' identified 30 years after he murdered at least 3 women

The Indiana State Police identified the “I-65 Killer” more than 30 years after he killed three women along the I-65 corridor in Indiana and Kentucky. 

Police identified Harry Edward Greenwell, also known as the “Days Inn Killer,” as the murderer using genetic genealogy. Greenwell, however, died in 2013 at the age of 68. 

Greenwell’s first victim was Vicki Heath, 41. She was shot and sexually assaulted on February 21, 1987, at a Super Eight Motel in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

In March 1989, Margaret “Peggy” Gill, 24, and Jeanne Gilbert, 34, were murdered. Gill disappeared when she was working at a Days Inn in Merrillville, Indiana. He was found at the end of a hall after she had been raped and shot in the head. Two hours later, Gilbert was abducted 52 miles south from a Remington Days Inn. She was also sexually assaulted and shot three times. 

There were no witnesses to the crimes. However, in 1990, the “I-65 killer” also assaulted a female employee at a Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana. However, she survived and was able to tell the police about the crime and give a description of the perpetrator. 

“We’ll never know what the killer was thinking. We’ll never learn any of the ‘why’s of his actions," said Kim Gilbert-Wright, Gilbert’s daughter. "And that’s just where we sit today.”

Detectives from Kentucky and Indiana collected ample amounts of evidence from all three crime scenes and preserved them until today. The preservation of the murderer’s DNA led the police to identify the killer almost 35 years later. 

“The detectives back then really were forward-thinking, I would almost say ahead of their time, with the type of things that they collected that ended up being one of the things that solved this case. Such as DNA," said Elizabethtown Police Detective Justin Hendrix.

In 2019, after conducting DNA research on the evidence, police were able to link all four crimes to the same man. The breakthrough in the case came when police matched the killer's DNA with ancestry records, according to investigators. 

“You might be able to hide for a while, but we’re going to find you, even if you’re not here,” said Indiana State Police Superintendent Douglas G. Carter.

After identifying the murderer, police found out that Greenwell had served two prison sentences for violent crimes. In 1963 and 1965, Greenwell was arrested for armed robbery and sodomy in Kentucky. In 1982, he was charged with Robbery in Iowa, where he escaped custody twice. 

"Greenwell had an extensive criminal history and had been in and out of prison several times, even escaping from jail on two separate occasions," said Sgt. Glen Fifield of the Indiana State Police. "He was known to travel frequently in the Midwest.”

Police said that Greenwell might also be responsible for other murders and rapes in the Midwest, all of which are being investigated. 

"We’re all now able to share in the healing process knowing the long-known attacker has been brought out of the dark and into the light,” Gilbert-Wright added.