Wisconsin police have solved a 65-year-old cold case involving a missing Michigan boy thanks to DNA evidence.
The case involved a missing 7-year-old boy named Markku Jutila, whose birth name was Chester Breiney.
According to USA Today, on October 4, 1959, the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office in Port Washington discovered a child’s skeleton in a culvert near Mequon, approximately 20 miles north of Milwaukee.
When he was found, the victim was thought to be between 6 and 8 years old.
At that time, detectives learned that the Houghton County Sheriff’s Department in Michigan, which is about 300 miles north, was looking for a child named Markku Jutila who had gone missing.
Friends and family of the boy’s adoptive parents, William and Hilja, told deputies in Houghton County and Chicago police that something was off about his disappearance.
The parents could not say where their son was, and they finally told the police that they had thrown the body in a ditch in Mequon before moving to Chicago. The mother also said she killed her son by beating him.
The couple was arrested in 1966 and sent back to Wisconsin to face charges, but the charges were dropped because there was no clear link between the body that had been found and the adopted boy.
Police were able to look at the bodies again and figure out that they belonged to Chester Alfred Breiney, whose birth mother had died in 2001.
The Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office asked Othram, a DNA testing lab that has helped solve many cold cases, to help them with the case in July 2024.
More research showed that the boy had a healed broken rib, which matched the mother’s story that she had hit him, and that the boy had died from being severely neglected.
Using DNA from a piece of the boy’s skull, police were able to confirm that the remains were those of members of the Breiney family. This proved, after 65 years, that the body really was that of the missing boy.
Since everyone who had anything to do with the boy’s death has already died, the sheriff’s office said that no charges will be brought. They were adopted, and they died in 1988.
“This is the truth about Chester Alfred Breiney’s death, so he can rest in peace. No one will be charged with his murder.” “No child should die like Chester did,” Sheriff Christy Knowles said in a statement.
“From the time he was found in 1959 until now, everyone involved in the investigation worked hard to bring Chester justice.” Even though it is been 65 years since Chester was killed, no one has forgotten about him.