COLUMBUS — Police say they now know who fatally beat a 14-year-old girl behind a shopping center 40 years ago.
A police official says Christie Mullins was killed by the man who initially reported her murder. That man who died of cancer in 2013 and was connected to the slaying recently by DNA evidence.
The Columbus Dispatch reports police Sgt. Eric Pilya apologized to members of Christie’s family who were present at a news conference Friday, saying “shoddy” police work at the time was partly to blame for the crime going unsolved.
Pilya says inadequate investigation allowed suspect Henry Newell Jr. to escape prosecution. Newell, then 25, had a criminal record that included arson.
Christie was killed in Clintonville neighborhood on Aug. 23, 1975, and her body was discovered behind the Woolco department store at Graceland Shopping Center.