I covered the story today of the arrest of Otis Whorley III in the murder of “Ole Blue” at Star City Auto Parts.
I broke this story back on July 6th and several other media outlets picked up on it.
I won’t give you my reaction to the arrest in this case until it’s adjudicated.
I can answer a basic question I got today that I didn’t have time to cover in the story which aired at 5 o’clock.
The question: Did DNA play a role in the arrest?
The short answer is probably not.
Roanoke police make it a point to always decline comment on pending cases but I’ve been covering crime in this area long enough to know it takes months to get DNA results from the state crime lab—- and that’s in *human* murder cases, much less dog murder cases.
I know for a fact DNA was collected from both Blue and several other items from the case.
It’s also possible Roanoke didn’t send any DNA to the state crime lab, figuring they might have a strong enough case without it.
I can tell you investigators found a thread of clothing in Blue’s mouth they’ll no doubt try to match to what the assailant was wearing.
An animal control officer took a bloody undershirt from Whorley’s home.
Investigators also took a box cutter and shoes among other items.
Any analysis of the thread and the bloody undershirt usually takes far less time at the state lab than analyzing DNA.
But whatever the case, my instincts tell me something must’ve happened earlier this week because police went ahead and charged Whorley with torturing Blue (someone from the commonwealth’s attorney’s office usually has to sign off on this) and didn’t wait to take it to a grand jury, which meets next Monday.
Posted by Scott Leamon at 06:03 PM. Filed under: leamon •
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