A suspect has finally been identified in the murder of Krista Martin, who was found dead in her Wichita, Kansas, home back in 1989.
The suspect, Paul Hart, died in a car accident in 1999, but his DNA linked him to Martin’s murder, the Wichita Police Department said in a press release on Monday.
On October 2, 1989, Krista Martin, 20, was found beaten to death in her apartment. She had also been sexually assaulted. DNA testing and databases were not widespread in 1989, but evidence collected at the scene was preserved as police tried to solve Martin’s murder.
Using traditional investigating methods, police were unable to locate Martin’s killer after years of investigation. DNA samples compared to potential suspects yielded no results.
Between 1990 and 1992, the original detective on the case sent evidence to the FBI crime lab to try and identify a suspect, but even that didn’t work, police said.
By 2009, DNA technology was more advanced, so the evidence in Martin’s murder was sent to the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center (SCRFSC) in Wichita. Scientists developed a DNA profile, which was entered into the national CODIS database, but no match was found.
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In 2020, police again attempted to re-evaluate the DNA evidence, sending it to the FBI. In 2021, a Wichita homicide detective and an FBI special agent teamed up to reinvestigate the case, traveling to Alabama and Arkansas to conduct interviews and collect evidence. In 2022, police sent the DNA evidence to private genealogists to try to identify a suspect. In April 2023, they had the suspect: Paul Hart. They quickly discovered Hart died in a car crash in Memphis, Tennessee, in March 1999.
Still, police traveled to Arkansas to collect DNA samples from Hart’s relatives. An Investigative Genetic Genealogy team, private genealogy company Orthram, and the SCRFSC confirmed that Hart was the suspect in Martin’s murder.
Once the facts were sent to Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett, he determined that charges would have been filed against Hart if he were still alive. Since he’s dead, the case is considered cleared.
Ember Moore, Martin’s niece, told reporters at the news conference that she became involved in her aunt’s case in 2009 at the age of 21. Moore thanked those who worked on resolving it and said the family had peace now that they knew who was suspected of killing Martin.
“She deserved so much more out of this life than what she ended up with,” she said of her aunt.