Coffee Cup Leads to Arrest in Pennsylvania Cold Case
On Monday, Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams announced 68-year-old David Sinopoli had been arrested the day prior in connection with the 1975 murder of 19-year-old Lindy Sue Biechler in Manor Township.
On December 9, 1975, Biechler’s aunt and uncle came to her apartment to exchange recipes when they found she had been stabbed 19 times and sexually assaulted.
In 1997, the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office submitted Biechler’s underwear for DNA testing to CeCe Moore, the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon Nanolabs. Through her testing, a man’s DNA profile based on semen found on the underwear.
In 2019, Moore began working with the District Attorney’s Office and Manor Township police to create a composite sketch on what the killer could look like based on the evidence they had. During a press conference in 2020, Moore revealed they had built a family tree to track down a potential suspect.
In their investigation, they found that many of the relatives of the person who killed Biechler hailed from the same small town in Italy, Gasperina. This is what led to Sinopoli becoming a suspect. Investigators later learned that Biechler and Sinopoli lived in the same apartment complex for a time.
On February 11, 2022, Sinopoli bought a cup of coffee at Philadelphia International Airport before catching a flight. After he threw he and his wife’s trash away, police officers found the cups and took them for genetic testing. In June, investigators matched two spots of blood found on Biechler’s pantyhose as matching Sinopoli.
Police obtained a sealed arrest warrant and arrested Sinopoli on July 14 at his home.
Sinopoli is charged with one count of criminal homicide. He remains held in Lancaster County Prison without bail. He will appear in court for a preliminary hearing on July 25.
