Man charged in 1987 homicide after old evidence tested for DNA

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A western Missouri man was charged with murder in a 1987 homicide after the Kansas City crime lab used current technology to test old DNA evidence.

Charles Locke, 43, of Amoret, was charged Friday with first-degree murder and rape in the slaying of Evelyn Keith in Kansas City. He was being held without bond.

Locke's brother was married to Keith's granddaughter, and police suspected Locke in 1987. They asked him for a sample of hair after the crime, and he gave one.

But hair evidence could only exclude suspects in 1987 and could not pinpoint a perpetrator. Because of that, police said, the case sat unsolved for years.

Frank Booth, the chief criminalist at the Kansas City Crime Lab, said the lab had evidence from cases dating back 30 years but did not have time to check all of them. Occasionally experts examine older cases with good evidence.

"It was one of those situations where we added that case to the queue," he said.

DNA was taken from the hair sample that Locke gave in 1987 and linked to DNA found on Keith's body.

Keith's body was found Jan. 14, 1987, by officers who were sent to her home after she did not show up for her 11 a.m. shift at Holt's Do-Nuts in Grandview. The back door had been forced open and the one-story home had been ransacked.

Her body, with two stab wounds in the throat and two in the chest, was found on a hallway floor, according to police reports.

Police were unsure when Keith had been killed. Relatives had last seen her at 10 the night before. She left three sons, two daughters, 13 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Relatives declined to comment, but Joe Bouldin lived next door to Keith in 1987 and remembered his neighbor.

Bouldin said her home was the social center for family members who gathered there every weekend to eat, play baseball in the back yard and play card games in the front room.

He said he had been hoping that police would solve the case.

"It was on my mind," he said. "It always bothered me that no one was arrested in the case.