Credit: Wichita Police Department
On Oct. 2, 1989, Krista Martin was discovered deceased in her residence after being sexually assaulted and experiencing fatal blunt force trauma to the head. Responding members of the Wichita Police Department collected DNA evidence but at the time, DNA testing and CODIS were not available.
Despite conducting numerous interviews and analyzing the available evidence, investigators were unable to identify a suspect. However, that did not stop them. They continued working on the case up to 1992, and then launched new efforts associated with advancing technology in 2009 and again from 2020 to 2023. And now, those efforts have come to fruition with the identification of a since-deceased suspect: Paul Hart.
A 34-year-old DNA sample
As seen in many of these cold cases, the Wichita Police Department had the foresight to carefully preserve the DNA evidence from Martin’s crime scene. As they worked the investigation, they continued to scrutinize the evidence and gather new leads. DNA samples were collected from multiple individuals for comparison with the evidence from the scene, yet no match was found. Between 1990 and 1992, the original case detective sent evidence to the FBI lab in hopes of identifying a suspect, but unfortunately, this effort yielded no results, leaving the case unsolved.
In 2009, the DNA evidence was submitted to the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center, resulting in the development of a potential suspect profile. This profile was uploaded to CODIS, but once again, it did not lead to any matches. Further DNA sampling from potential suspects also proved unsuccessful.
In 2020, the Wichita Police Department, leveraging advanced technology, again sought the assistance of the FBI to re-evaluate the DNA evidence collected in 1989.
Then, in 2021, a dedicated team comprising a Wichita Police Homicide Detective and an FBI Special Agent embarked on a journey to Alabama and Arkansas, collaborating with additional federal agents working in Maryland. Their mission was to conduct extensive interviews and gather additional evidence in the case.
The investigation persisted into 2022, and WPD joined forces with private industry genealogists to scrutinize DNA profiles and attempt to identify a suspect. Finally, in April 2023, a possible suspect—Paul Hart—emerged. Hart died in a traffic collision in Memphis, Tenn., just months after Martin’s murder.
In June 2023, the WPD homicide detective and FBI Special Agent traveled to Arkansas, where they collected additional DNA samples from direct relatives of Hart. They continued to conduct interviews and submitted DNA evidence for further analysis.
In collaboration with the FBI, an investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) team, Othram, and the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center, WPD investigators were able to utilize IGG techniques to confirm that Hart was the suspect in the 1989 homicide of Martin.
Upon presenting the facts of the case to Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett, it was determined that charges would be filed if Hart were still alive. As he is deceased, this case is now considered cleared.
“It started in 2020 with investigative genetic genealogy. We started looking for cases we could use this new technology on and this was the first one that we took up. We would not be here today without IGG,” said Wichita Police Captain Christian Corey.