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    • Michigan boy’s murder finally solved after 65 years
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    Michigan boy’s murder finally solved after 65 years

    Harry Posted on

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    The murder of a 7-year-old Houghton boy was finally solved 65 years later, using forensic DNA testing of a child’s skull, court records and newspaper accounts of the actual crime, and a police investigation, authorities said.

    New evidence allowed closure to the complex case that baffled investigators in three states; It is an example of the diligence and perseverance of investigators and the advances in forensic science, officials said.

    The skeletal remains of a child found in a culvert in Mequon, Wisconsin, in 1959 turned out to be the body of Chester Breiney, a boy whose life was “traumatically ended by the hands of his adoptive parents,” Wisconsin authorities said. “

    “Chester can now rest in peace as the truth of his death is known,” the sheriff’s office in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, said. a social media post last week. “No child should leave this Earth the way Chester did.”

    This case is also one of the latest examples of how DNA detection has become a powerful tool for law enforcement agencies around the world to close and, in some cases, prosecute cold murder and missing persons cases once thought unsolvable.

    For example last month Human remains unearthed about 15 years ago The case of a missing Michigan man last seen nearly three decades ago during a highway expansion project in Arizona was finally identified this week, with a partial solution.

    In the more recent case, the boy’s parents, Hilja and William Jutila, were arrested after they left Houghton and moved to Chicago in 1966. They were charged after they admitted beating the boy and dumping his body, but they did not kill him.

    And prosecutors later dropped the charges due to limited evidence.

    Although the Jutilas have since died and charges will not be filed, the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office said in its post that the young boy can finally “rest in peace now.”

    200 clues, a confession and an arrest

    According to police accounts:

    The case began in 1959, when the bones of a child were found in a ditch on Davis Road in Mequon, Wisconsin, about a five-hour drive from Houghton in the Upper Peninsula, north of Milwaukee.

    The victim is estimated to be between 6 and 8 years old.

    Mequon police conducted the initial investigation following more than 200 tips.

    Meanwhile, the Houghton County Sheriff’s Office was also investigating another case: missing child Markku Jutila. Deputies coordinated the Chicago Police Department after Jutilas’ family members began asking what happened to Markku.

    When questioned in 1966, the Jutilas family were initially unable to disclose the whereabouts of their adopted son.

    Later, during a police interview, the couple “admitted to fleeing Houghton for Chicago, dumping the boy’s body in a ditch in Mequon before arriving in Chicago,” and the mother “admitted to physically beating her son to death.”

    During psychiatric evaluations, the Jutilas claimed that Markku was sick and was sent home from kindergarten, that Markku had been sick for several days before he was found dead in his room, and that they were scared.

    The couple then said they drove to Chicago and dumped Markku’s body along the way.

    Houghton County Sheriff’s Department investigators contacted Mequon Police and compared notes, found the body to have similar characteristics to Markku Jutila, and the parents were arrested and extradited to Houghton County for trial.

    But the charges were dismissed after three days of testimony at a court hearing that included Chicago police detectives, an anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin, someone from the Wisconsin Crime Lab and a Houghton County deputy.

    A new look at the evidence

    That’s where the investigative trail ended until last year, investigators said.

    That’s when a Wisconsin Department of Justice special agent, an Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office detective and a Madison State Crime lab analyst met with a professor from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.

    The professor and analysts took another look at the boy’s remains.

    By tracing DNA from the remains, dental and court records, and articles in the Milwaukee Journal, investigators were able to find that Markku Jutila’s birth name was Chester Breiney, his birthday was February 26, 1952, and that he was his biological mother.

    The boy was sent to an orphanage and adopted in 1955.

    Only the child’s mother, Josephine Breiney, who died in 2001, was identified in the records.

    The Ozaukee County District Attorney’s Office reviewed the results and positive DNA identification of the remains. However, authorities said the adoptive parents died in 1988 and “there will be no future prosecution in this case.”

    No living relatives of Chester Breiney have been found.

    The boy’s body was interred Friday at St. Mary’s Church, both in Port Washington, Wisconsin. Funeral services at the Church of Peter of Alcantara and St. He will be buried with a funeral service at St. Mary’s Parish Cemetery.

    Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or [email protected].

    Harry
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