By Rick Callahan
Associated Press
Indiana police on Tuesday identified the serial killer suspected of raping and killing three women in Indiana and Kentucky in the late 1980s and early 1990s while working night shifts as motel maids. .
Sergeant Glen Fifield explained that a laboratory analysis of samples collected at the crime scene positively identified Harry Edward Greenwell as "the I-65 killer," so named because the attacks occurred in motels near that interstate.
But by the time they managed to track him down, it was too late: Greenwell died in January 2013.
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This undated photo provided by the Indiana State Police shows Harry Edward Greenwell, the suspect in the "Days Inn" cold cases.AP
"
Greenwell had an extensive criminal history and had been in and out of prison multiple times
, even escaping from jail on two separate occasions," Fifield said, and "was known to travel frequently in the Midwest."
Greenwell was born in Kentucky and died in Iowa. His obituary mentions that he died of cancer.
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Fifield said there is evidence linking Greenwell to the Feb. 21, 1987, murder of Vicki Heath, who worked the night shift at the Super Eight Hotel in Elizabethtown, Kentucky;
and the murder on March 3, 1989 of Mary Gill and Jeanne Gilbert.
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Gilbert was killed while covering the night shift at a Days Inn in Remington, Indiana, and Gill at one in Merrillville, Indiana.
The investigation also became known as the
Days Inn Killer
case .
Fifield said investigators also linked Greenwell to a Jan. 2, 1990 attack on a woman who was employed at a Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana, and was "attacked in a similar manner to the three previous victims."
“This victim was able to escape her attacker and survive.
Later he was able to give an excellent physical description of the suspect,” he said.
"She is the only known victim to survive the brutal and heinous attacks of this killer," he said.
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Kim Gilbert Wright, daughter of Jeanne Gilbert, speaks after the state of Indiana announced the identity of the suspect in the "Days Inn" cold cases.Michael Conroy/AP
Fifield said the Indiana State Police crime lab compared ballistic evidence in the Gill and Gilbert murders, and DNA samples linking the Heath and Gilbert murders to the Columbus, Indiana case.
He said one of the main factors linking the
four crime scenes was their proximity to Interstate 65
, which runs from Gary, Indiana, to Mobile, Alabama.