Garland police crediting DNA genealogy for helping solve a nearly four-decades-old murder case. Detectives this week arrested a man in New Mexico for the 1986 killing of a woman in her Garland home.
Detective Lucas Shupe with Garland police says when the initial homicide detectives showed up at the home in the 3600 block of Colbath, they noticed blood drops outside the home.
Blood that did not belong to Barbara Villareal - a wife, sister and daughter who had been stabbed to death inside.
At the time, Villareal’s husband said he heard his wife screaming and came upon intruders attacking her.
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“Something was missing, it just kind of wasn’t adding up,” Shupe said
The blood was tested and it did not come back to Villareal’s husband and the case went cold for decades.
In the years that followed, Marc Dunderman says his family suspected someone close to Villareal was involved in his sister’s murder.
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“There were things that came out that made us kind of suspect that it was the husband and the brother,” Dunderman said Friday.
Det. Shupe says in recent years, Garland PD was able to submit remaining blood samples collected outside the home for DNA genealogy typing. Shupe says the results provide enough probable cause for a New Mexico judge to sign an arrest warrant.
On Tuesday, with the help of the Lovington Police Department in New Mexico, Garland detectives arrested Liborio Canales.
Canales, 85, is the brother-in-law of Barbara Villareal.
“The initial detectives on the scene, they didn’t even know he had a brother,” Shupe said.
According to Shupe, Canales admitted his involvement in her murder saying he was angry with Villareal over a prior dispute.
Villareal’s husband died in Mexico in the early 1990s, according to Garland Police.
Dunderman, now 56, says he has waited to hear news of an arrest in his older sister’s murder since he was 19.
"We’re happy that there’s closure, that we’re working towards closure,” Dunderman said. “It doesn’t reverse any of the pain that she suffered at the end of her life and the void that we all have and have had for nearly 40 years.”
