{"id":880804,"date":"2026-10-13T12:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T12:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/880804\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T12:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T12:20:11","slug":"ex-chicago-detective-identified-as-killing-child-in-65-year-cold-case-us-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/880804\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Chicago detective identified as killing child in 65-year cold case | US crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago<\/a> police on Monday said they recently used newly discovered DNA evidence to tie the 1960 murder of an eight-year-old girl to one of its own former homicide detectives.<\/p>\n

Thomas McInerney had been dead for 20 years by the time authorities issued a statement identifying him as the killer of Gloria Kowalewicz \u2013 well after retiring from the Chicago police department (CPD) and two federal public defender\u2019s offices in Nevada<\/a> where he worked as an investigator.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the CPD\u2019s statement expressed a hope that the news about McInerney \u201cbrings a measure of closure to all who knew Gloria and her story\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMcInerney should have never worn the CPD star,\u201d the statement added. \u201cAnd it is devastating to accept that he was never identified and held accountable while he was alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chicago Tribune was the first to report<\/a> on the exposure of McInerney as Gloria\u2019s murderer \u2013 recounting in a lengthy article on Sunday how the girl\u2019s killing, which shocked the city, was solved more than six decades later by DNA evidence gathered from a genetic ancestry website.<\/p>\n

Gloria was last seen alive on the morning of 12 November 1960 as she walked from her family\u2019s West Englewood neighborhood home to a mass at a nearby church.<\/p>\n

She never made it to the service. Someone abducted her on the way and fatally shot her, and within hours her body was found discarded in a ditch at a forest preserve south-west of Chicago<\/a>, police said in their statement.<\/p>\n

Police said they secured various pieces of evidence at the scene where Kowalewicz had apparently been murdered \u2013 including a bullet, her coat and a white communion purse with a prayer book inside. \u201cInvestigators also lifted a fingerprint from the strap of Gloria\u2019s purse,\u201d police noted.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Tribune reported that police \u2013 along with volunteers from the ranks of local firefighters, Boy Scouts and military veterans \u2013 mounted a large search for the girl\u2019s killer.<\/p>\n

A police-headed taskforce interviewed about 1,300 people in connection with Gloria\u2019s slaying, among them a dozen individuals who were given lie-detector tests while being questioned.<\/p>\n

Police said none of that allowed them to identify a suspect, however.<\/p>\n

Yet that changed earlier in 2026 when DNA submitted to a family tree website enabled the FBI to join McInerney to the scene of Gloria\u2019s murder, according to the Tribune.<\/p>\n

Further DNA, fingerprint and ballistic testing then established that McInerney \u2013 a US army veteran who lived around the corner from the girl \u2013 had killed Gloria the CPD said in its statement on Monday.<\/p>\n

McInerney joined the Chicago police force in 1959, said<\/a> his obituary, which was published after his death on 30 August 2006. He was about to turn 25 at the time of Gloria\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

The obituary said McInerney was investigating homicides for the CPD when he retired from the agency in 1987. He then worked as investigator for the federal public defender\u2019s offices in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, until his retirement in 2004.<\/p>\n

McInerney\u2019s obituary also touted his receiving \u201cnumerous commendations during his years with the [CPD]\u201d \u2013 as well as his being recognized as outstanding federal defender investigator in 2003. It described him as a husband, a father to two sons and three daughters, and a grandfather to a dozen children.<\/p>\n

The CPD statement on Monday made it a point to say that Gloria\u2019s parents died without ever knowing who had murdered their daughter. The agency called McInerney\u2019s \u201cabhorrent\u201d, saying: \u201cThey not only took the life of an eight-year-old child \u2013 but left \u2026 all who knew and loved her shattered as they searched for answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gloria\u2019s brother, Adam Kowalewicz, told<\/a> the Tribune that it was a relief to learn his sister\u2019s murderer had been identified. But he said to the outlet that he was frustrated McInerney had died at age 70 without ever being made to face justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe never paid his dues,\u201d Adam Kowalewicz said to the Tribune. \u201cYou hope he\u2019s going to pay his dues with the good lord.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chicago police on Monday said they recently used newly discovered DNA evidence to tie the 1960 murder of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":880805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-880804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}