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Zorro

(16,269 posts)
Wed Feb 1, 2023, 10:33 PM Feb 2023

Free meal offer leads to arrest in 1987 killing of Pinellas woman, 82

Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office detectives say DNA matches their suspect to the killing. But how they go the DNA took a clever ruse.

A man’s inability to turn down a free meal has contributed to his arrest in connection with the slaying of an 82-year-old Pinellas County woman that had gone unsolved for 36 years.

Michael Lapniewski, 55, was booked into the Pinellas County Jail Tuesday afternoon on a charge of first-degree murder in connection with the 1987 slaying of Opal Weil, a widow who was choked and beaten in her Lealman home.

DNA was a key factor in cracking the case, according to an arrest affidavit written by Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office detectives. But how they got the DNA involved a clever ruse in which they advertised a free meal at a restaurant — an offer to which Lapniewski responded.

After he finished his meal and left, detectives seized the spoon and fork he had used and submitted them for DNA testing. They were a match to hairs that had been found on Weil’s pink nightgown, her electric blanket and her bed after her killing, according to the affidavit.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/crime/2023/02/01/pinellas-sheriffs-office-cold-case-killing-arrest-dna-genealogy/
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