“It’s a fluke that he got caught because once the task force in 1993 was over, a case like that goes to the bottom of the pile. This is not one of those situations where there’s a team of detectives that are still working on it. Reality is not like that,” Green said.
Green said that because of the push and persistence from Margaret Mulcahy, the wife of victim Thomas Mulcahy, cops looked at it again. Detectives involved in the case from in New Jersey utilized a new fingerprint technology that their counterparts at the Toronto Police Department had been using.
“Toronto Police Service was using a reasonably new technology called vacuum metal deposition. Because of the relationships that the New Jersey police had with the Canadian police, they were aware of this technology and called in a favor,” Green said.
The detectives sent fingerprints they were able to lift from the victims and sent them to Canada. Toronto Police were able to look to see what fingerprints matched from their massive database. And, as luck would have it, they found a match from someone who was fingerprinted in Maine in 1973.
How the Bag Murders and the Last Call Killer Put in Focus the Dangers the New York LGBTQ+ Community Faces
Sal Bono
Inside Edition