Nearly 50 years after a woman was sexually assaulted and strangled in her apartment in Concord, New Hampshire, authorities say they've finally identified her killer: a prior suspect excused by faulty evidence. Judith Lord, a 22-year-old mother to a young son found safe in his crib in the same apartment, was said to have been afraid of her next-door neighbor, Ernest Theodore Gable, with whom she shared a wall, per CBS News. Soon after Lord was found dead on May 20, 1975, investigators discovered Gable's fingerprints on the outside of her window.
Investigators also collected hair and semen from the crime scene. But a test on the hairs, submitted to the FBI's Forensic Laboratory, "led to an incorrect conclusion" that they couldn't have come from Gable, according to a release from the New Hampshire Department of Justice. Though investigators had other evidence against Gable, and had been planning to indict him, the report on the hairs "effectively halted" the investigation for decades, according to a report from the state attorney general, John Formella.
After the case was reopened, new DNA testing matched Gable to semen found on towels in Lord's apartment. And, after 2015, when the FBI and US Department of Justice admitted most microscopic hair comparison tests had returned flawed reports, the hairs were finally identified as coming from Gable, per CBS. Gable, however, will never face justice, as he was fatally stabbed in Los Angeles in 1987 at the age of 36. Lord's case will now be formally classified as solved. Formella said the case showed time could be both an "impediment" and "an asset." Lord's son, Gregory Lord Jr., took in the news Monday, telling WBUR that he was "proud" to resemble his mother, who will always be with him.
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