November 21, 2024
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After 45 years, police say they know who killed Kathy Halle

By Susan Sarkauskas - Daily Herald Media Group
Bruce Lindahl's Downers Grove North High School yearbook photo (top left), the sketch authorities made based on DNA found in the clothing of murder victim Pamela Maurer, and other photos of Lindahl.

Bruce Lindahl's Downers Grove North High School yearbook photo (top left), the sketch authorities made based on DNA found in the clothing of murder victim Pamela Maurer, and other photos of Lindahl. (Rick West)

North Aurora police say they now know who killed Kathy Halle in 1979, whose body was found in the Fox River.

They say DNA evidence has identified Bruce Lindahl as the perpetrator. Lindahl, who died in 1981, has been tied to the murder of a Woodridge teen in 1976 and suspected in several other murders of young women in DuPage, Kane and Kendall counties in the 1970s.

Police officials and Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser will talk about how authorities solved the Halle case during a news conference scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

Halle disappeared on March 29, 1979, after leaving her apartment to pick up her sister from work. Her car was found in the apartment parking lot, with a large puddle of blood on the floor behind the driver’s seat, according to Chicago Tribune news articles at the time.

Hundreds of people searched for her. Her body was found almost a month later when a 12-year-old boy fishing spotted it about 200 feet south of the I-88 bridge over the Fox River.

Other cases

In February 2020, DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin announced DNA evidence showed Lindahl raped and murdered 15-year-old Pamela Maurer of Woodridge in 1976. Her body was found in Lisle. Authorities had exhumed his body to obtain DNA samples and matched it to semen found inside Maurer’s underwear.

Berlin said Lindahl was also a suspect in the murder of Debra Colliander of Aurora. Lindahl had been charged with kidnapping her, taking her to his home in Aurora, threatening her with a handgun and raping her. She escaped, naked, to a nearby home.

But she disappeared two weeks before trial in October 1980. Part of her body was found in April 1982 in a farm field in Oswego Township in Kendall County. The cause of death could not be determined, but the coroner ruled it a homicide.

Lindahl died in April 1981 at the age of 28. His body was found atop that of victim Charles Huber, 18, who had been stabbed 28 times. Naperville police said they believe Lindahl accidentally stabbed himself in his femoral artery during the attack.

Berlin said Lindahl is a suspect in the disappearance of Deborah McCall, 19, of Downers Grove in 1979 and the murder of Elizabeth Drews of Downers Grove in 1977.

A retired Lisle detective who had worked on the Maurer case said last year that he suspects Lindahl was also involved in the murder of Susan Jabczynski, 21, of, Aurora in 1980 and two other young women.

https://www.dailyherald.com/20241022/crime/after-45-years-police-say-they-know-who-killed-kathy-halle/

North AuroraKane County