Cigarette leads to arrest 9 years after woman was stabbed 60 times, Illinois police say
About nine years after the murder of Holly Cassano, a man has been arrested in the parking lot of an Illinois mall, the Champaign County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
Through advanced DNA testing, deputies were able to identify 30-year-old Michael Henslick as a person of interest, Sheriff Dan Walsh said in a press conference.
Cassano, 22, was found dead by her mom on her bedroom floor at about 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 2, 2009 in a Mahomet, Illinois, mobile-home park, The News-Gazette reported. “She had been stabbed 60 times and sexually assaulted,” the paper reported.
Since then, detectives interviewed more than 100 people and tested dozens of DNA samples, according to The News-Gazette.
After using technology to narrow the “pool of suspects who could have contributed the DNA found at the murder scene,” they identified Henslick as a person of interest, the newspaper reported.
In the press conference, the Sheriff’s Office said it used DNA collected at the scene, genealogy research and ancestry results going back to the 1800s to find a suspect. Once identified, they began following Henslick for about two days, Walsh said. Deputies were watching and hoping to get a DNA sample from the man.
The man eventually “discarded DNA” on a cigarette, Walsh said.
“Our arrestee was a smoker,” he said. “He was also a litterer.”
After the Sheriff’s Office got the cigarette butt, it was sent to a lab, Walsh said during the press conference. The results matched Henslick’s DNA to the DNA that was found at the crime scene.
Henslick was then arrested without incident at about 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday, the release states. He is being held on a $10 million bond in the death of Cassano.
In the press conference, deputies said Cassano and Henslick went to the same high school at the same time, had mutual acquaintances and lived in the same mobile home park.
Henslick has been in and out of jail several times after the murder of Cassano, police said during the conference. The same year she was murdered, Henslick was put on “first offender probation for drug possession,” WAND reported. During his probation, Henslick ignored the court ordered DNA sample, the station reported.