COLUMBUS – One of the detectives has died. So has the suspect. But the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit persisted and has solved the 1983 murder of a 15-year-old Columbus boy.
“While we may have a Cold Case Unit, we don’t have cold cases, they are lukewarm because we won’t give up,” said Sheriff Russell Martin.
After decades of on-and-off investigations, detectives determined that Daniel Anderson, who died in 2013, was responsible for the 1983 murder of John Muncy, Martin said.
Muncy was murdered in Columbus and, on Oct. 16, 1983, his dismembered body was discovered by a Delaware County sheriff’s deputy along the side of South Galena Road in northern Delaware County, Martin said,
The initial investigation lasted several years, and state and federal crime labs were able to determine several blood types based on evidenced from the scene where Muncy’s body was found but technology and databases of that era were not able to provide much beyond that, Martin said.
The case went cold until it was re-opened in 2010 in the hope that technological advances might be able to shed new light on the investigation.
Detectives spent another decade on the case until June 2018 when they learned about a cold case solved by the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office in Washington state, Martin said.
There was DNA evidence in both cases but no suspect.
The investigators in Washington identified Anderson as the suspect in their case through used a public DNA/genealogical database, Parabon NanoLabs, and shared the information with the detectives in Delaware who sent a sample of their suspect DNA to the lab, Martin said.
It was another 18 months before Parabon Labs predicted with a high confidence level that the suspect was one of three brothers, two of whom were eliminated.
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation confirmed that DNA found at the scene where Muncy’s body was found belonged to Anderson, who would have been 30 years old at the time of the crime and had a violent criminal history involving teenage boys, Martin said. In early 2020, detectives identified Anderson as Muncy’s murderer.
“Technological advancements and determination on the part of our detectives led to the closure of this 36-year-old case. Despite numerous obstacles, the death of one of our detectives, and discouraging dead-ends along the way, these detectives persevered and their hard work paid off,” Martin said.
“We realize there’s never really closure, but we hope this resolution answers some of the questions for the Muncy family, who have lived all these years without their loved one and with the burning question of who this monster was,” Martin said.