After 61 years of investigation, a suspect has been identified in the brutal rape and murder of an Albany woman in 1964, authorities announced Wednesday.
Catherine Blackburn, 50, was found dead in her home on Colonie Street on Sept. 13 of that year. She’d been beaten, stabbed and sexually assaulted, and her dead body had been mutilated, cops said. But in the following six decades, no suspects were identified.
However, on Wednesday, Albany police said DNA connected Joseph Nowakowski, a local man who died in 1998, to the murder.
“Sixty-one years ago, evil entered my aunt’s house and changed our lives forever,” Blackburn’s niece Sandy Carmichael, who found her body in 1964, said at a press conference. “We prayed for this day. To all who made this possible, God bless you.”
The key piece of evidence was a handkerchief found under Blackburn’s body at the scene, police said. DNA from semen on the fabric matched that of Nowakowski, whose body was exhumed as part of the investigation.
Before his death, Nowakowski served time behind bars for a different violent incident. In 1973, he attacked a 74-year-old woman with a hatchet while she was sleeping and served seven years in prison before his release in 1980.
Prior to the hatchet attack, Nowakowski was also charged with several burglaries in and around Albany. Following his release, he had no further run-ins with the law ahead of his death in 1998.
With News Wire Services
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