The Death of Helene Pruszynski

Helene Pruszynski disappeared in January 1980. It was assumed she had vanished while walking to a bus station. Her body was recovered in a field the next time anyone saw her. She'd been raped and murdered with a knife. Many leads were not followed up on by the authorities, and no one was ever apprehended for the crime. It wasn't until many years afterwards. Jesse Still, like many other people, used the website 23andMe in 2018 to learn more about her family tree. What she couldn't have realized at the time was that she was inadvertently informing the authorities about what had occurred to Helene Pruszynski 40 years before.

Law enforcement detected Still's DNA. It shared some of the DNA with the murderer's genetic makeup. Of course, not Stills herself, but a family relative. Stills was revealed to be Helen Pruszynski's killer's cousin. Still, ironically, donated her DNA to the site because she was a true crime buff who was particularly interested in the case of the Golden State Killer. She was aware that the killer had been apprehended thanks to DNA obtained from a genealogy website and wished to upload her own in the hope that it would be useful to someone one day. Two months later, she was contacted by law authorities about a possible link to the murderer. With Still’s help, law enforcement built a family tree and came up with James Clanton, a relative she didn’t even know she had.

Date: 1980