A woman’s beheaded body was found burnt in a ditch in 1985. 40 years on, a truck driver is charged with murder

A suspect has been charged with murder 40 years after the beheaded and burnt body of a 24-year-outdated woman was found dumped in a ditch in Wisconsin.

Terry Dolowy, a student at the College of Wisconsin-La Crosse, was last considered alive at her home at a trailer park in Barre Mills on February 14 1985, after she returned from her job at a local restaurant.

She then vanished without a trace along with her white poodle.

Police said at the time that the door to the trailer she shared with her fiancé was found ajar nevertheless her personal gadgets were tranquil inside, The Vernon Reporter reported.

Four days later, Dolowy’s decapitated and burnt body was found along Mohawk Valley Road, Vernon County.

For 40 years, the case appeared to pass wintry, with over 500 of us interviewed nevertheless no arrests made – except now.

At a press convention on Tuesday, Monroe County District Attorney Kevin Croninger announced that Michael Raymond Popp, a 60-year-outdated truck driver from Tomah, Monroe County, had been arrested and charged with first-level murder.

Advances in DNA technology had enabled investigators to match the DNA taken during Dolowy’s autopsy to DNA samples taken from Popp in January 2023, according to a criminal complaint.

Popp initially informed police that Dolowy was simplest a casual acquaintance nevertheless, when confronted with the DNA proof, he claimed they “maybe had a diminutive affair” lasting six to eight months, NBCChicago reported.

Popp was arrested for Dolowy’s murder and is now being held in Vernon County Jail, Vernon County Sheriff Roy Torgerson said at the briefing. He faces lifestyles in prison if convicted.

Croninger said that Popp had also been charged with stalking, threats to communicate derogatory information, as properly as totally different charges related to the possession of medicine in connection to a separate alleged sufferer.

At the briefing, Torgerson insisted that the case had never long gone wintry.

“These sheriffs carried the torch of this investigation, which as I talked about earlier, I don’t really feel ever went wintry,” he said, thanking the “a large variety of” law enforcement authorities that had collaborated in the investigation.

He added: “I really want to underscore that the La Crosse County Sheriff’s Office has labored with the Vernon County Sheriff’s workplace in tandem for all these years, 39 years, and have never ever given up.”