Almost 12 years after Heidi Louise Bernadzikowski was found with her throat slit in her Baltimore home, police arrested her alleged killer in Greeley based on a DNA match, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Alexander Charles Bennett, 32, is in custody in the Jefferson County jail awaiting extradition to Maryland, where he is expected to face murder charges.
Bennett, who is a convicted offender in Colorado, had his DNA input into the national Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, database.
Police in Baltimore County uploaded DNA evidence they gleaned from the crime scene, and in September 2011, there was a match in CODIS, said Steve Johnson, assistant director of the CBI.
On Thursday night, police from Baltimore County came to Greeley and arrested Bennett without incident.
Arrests of suspects in an another state for a years-old homicide used to be a rare occurrence, but DNA has changed that, Johnson said.
“We are starting to see more and more of these, and it is through the great work of DNA and all the collection points,” he said.
On April 20, 2000, Bernadzikowski, 24, was found dead by her boyfriend after he returned home from running errands, according to an article about the case in The Baltimore Sun.
She was an administrative assistant for a health-insurance benefits company, the newspaper said.
In 2004, Bernadzikowski’s family filed a civil lawsuit against her boyfriend, Stephen M. Cooke, over a $700,000 life-insurance policy she had, and they settled the case out of court, the article said.
Before the settlement, a police detective assigned to the case indicated in court testimony that Cooke was the sole suspect in the homicide.
According to the CBI, Baltimore County police believe Bennett was in the area at the time of the murder. Police there did not return a call for comment.
Bennett’s Colorado criminal history dates to 1999 and includes arrests for burglary and motor-vehicle theft.
