Daniel Leonard Wells was a 57-year-old Pensacola, Florida man arrested on March 18, 2020, for the 1985 rape and strangulation of 23-year-old Tonya Ethridge McKinley, a cold case cracked when investigators used genetic genealogy to build a family tree from crime scene DNA and then matched a cigarette butt he tossed from his car to evidence collected 35 years earlier. Eight days after his arrest, jail staff found him hanged in his cell in what authorities called an apparent suicide.
The 1985 Killing He Was Accused Of
Tonya Ethridge McKinley, a mother of an 18-month-old son, was last seen alive around 1:30 a.m. on January 1, 1985, at Darryl’s Bar & Grille in Pensacola, where she had been celebrating New Year’s Eve.1WEAR-TV. Man Arrested for New Year’s 1985 Murder of Tonya McKinley in Pensacola Shortly before 5:00 a.m., a family driving a sick dog to an all-night veterinary clinic found her body in an empty lot at the corner of Peacock Drive and Creighton Road, one block off Scenic Highway.2Pensacola News Journal. Pensacola Police Make Arrest in 35-Year-Old Cold Case Murder
She had been strangled and sexually assaulted and was found partially nude.3CBS News. Tonya McKinley Murder: Daniel Wells Arrested in Florida 1985 Killing of Young Mother Crime scene technicians recovered semen, head hair, and pubic hair, and later DNA testing showed all of the biological evidence came from a single individual. Detectives conducted dozens of interviews and preserved the physical evidence, but no match turned up in DNA databases and no suspect was publicly named. The investigation spanned three generations of Pensacola detectives before it was solved.2Pensacola News Journal. Pensacola Police Make Arrest in 35-Year-Old Cold Case Murder
How DNA and Genealogy Identified Him
The Pensacola Police Department partnered with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based forensic genetics firm, to apply genetic genealogy to the preserved evidence.4Pensacola News Journal. Suspect in 35-Year-Old Pensacola Cold Case Commits Suicide in Jail Cell Parabon uploaded the crime scene DNA profile to an open-source genealogy database, which returned matches to several distant cousins of the unknown killer. From those matches, investigators built a family tree and worked through it by elimination until one man remained: Daniel Leonard Wells, still living in Pensacola.5BBC News. DNA Arrest in 1985 Florida Murder Case The genealogy work took more than a year.6ABC News. DNA From Discarded Cigarette Solves 1985 Cold Case Murder
To confirm the identification, detectives put Wells under surveillance and watched him throw a cigarette butt from his car window. They collected it and sent it for forensic testing. The DNA on the cigarette matched the crime scene sample, and according to the arrest report there was a less than one-in-700-billion chance the DNA belonged to anyone else.4Pensacola News Journal. Suspect in 35-Year-Old Pensacola Cold Case Commits Suicide in Jail Cell The approach mirrored the technique that led to the 2018 arrest of Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer.
Arrest, Charges, and Prior Record
On March 18, 2020, Pensacola police arrested Wells on charges of first-degree murder and first-degree sexual battery.7Northwest Florida Daily News. Pensacola Police Make Arrest in 35-Year-Old Cold Case Murder He was 57, meaning he had been about 22 when McKinley was killed. He had never previously been named as a suspect.5BBC News. DNA Arrest in 1985 Florida Murder Case Wells was held without bond at the Escambia County Jail, with his first court hearing set for April 8, 2020.4Pensacola News Journal. Suspect in 35-Year-Old Pensacola Cold Case Commits Suicide in Jail Cell
Public records showed that within three years of the killing, Wells had been arrested twice: once for battery, to which he pleaded no contest, and once for soliciting a prostitute.8NBC Philadelphia. Police Use DNA Genealogy to Arrest Suspect in 1985 Slaying Little else has been reported about how he spent the intervening 35 years. PPD Captain Chuck Mallett, who led the investigation, said, “This was a case that spanned three generations of detectives. I know it took a long time, but it was one of those cases we never gave up on.”2Pensacola News Journal. Pensacola Police Make Arrest in 35-Year-Old Cold Case Murder The arrest was the oldest cold-case arrest in Pensacola history and the first time familial DNA technology had been used to solve a case in Northwest Florida.
Death in the Escambia County Jail
Wells never made it to his April 8 hearing. On the morning of March 26, 2020, eight days after the arrest, officers at the Escambia County Jail found him hanged in his cell. The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office classified the death as an apparent suicide.9NBC Miami. Florida Man Linked by DNA to 1985 Murder Found Dead in Cell There would be no trial.
McKinley’s son, Timothy Davidson Jr., who had been 18 months old when his mother was killed, called Wells a coward. “He didn’t even wait until the trial even started,” Davidson said. “It’s frustrating for our family on a lot of levels because we waited so long to get justice. Now, it seems like we just have a lot more unanswered questions.”4Pensacola News Journal. Suspect in 35-Year-Old Pensacola Cold Case Commits Suicide in Jail Cell Speaking earlier, at the time of the arrest, Davidson had said: “My mom, she never got to raise me, never got to be a part of my life. He got to live his life the last 35 years. He got to have a family. He got to be around his children … and all those years he was out there, knowing what he did.” He added, “Nothing could ever make up for losing my mom, but at least now we know what happened to her.”3CBS News. Tonya McKinley Murder: Daniel Wells Arrested in Florida 1985 Killing of Young Mother