Overview
- Camden County prosecutors, who spoke Thursday, named Francis T. Schooley as the likely killer in the 1993 death of Marebeth Welsh and the 1994 murder of Jennifer Persia.
- Evidence from Welsh's clothing that held sperm matched an unknown male blood profile from Persia's home after a 2025 upload to the FBI's national DNA system.
- Kinship testing of Schooley's relatives through investigative genetic genealogy pointed to him as the source, with results about 4.8 million times more likely than an unrelated person.
- Schooley died in 2000 at age 39, so prosecutors said he would have faced charges if he were alive.
- Detectives found prior ties between Schooley and both victims and said the 2024 Homicide Cold Case Unit will keep reviewing motive and any links to other unsolved cases.