DNA Solves One Case, FourMore to Go
by Robert A. Waters
For 37 years, Okaloosa County detectives figured they knew who killedCatherine Ainsworth. But with little evidence, their suspect walked free, got married, had children, and lived a normallife. Eventually, technology, in the form of DNA,would catch up with him. Justice, however, would never beserved.
On August 30, 1975, two worried friends drove to the Niceville, Florida apartment of their co-worker, thirty-seven-year-old Catherine Ainsworth. The pretty divorcee lived alone and worked as Supervisor of Eglin Air Force Base Exchange. She hadn't come in to work that day, hadn't called in sick, and hadn't answered her phone.
Arriving at Ainsworth's home, Edna Posey and Marlene Dickman noticed Ainsworth'scar still in the driveway and music blasting from a radio inside her apartment. They contacted the manager, and together entered the unlocked apartment door. There layAinsworth, naked and bruised. And dead. Placing a bedsheet overher face, the panicked trio called 911.
Soon investigators began canvassing the apartment complex. One man got their attention. Sgt. William P. Rouse, an airman at Eglin, lived two units down from Ainsworth. When questioned, he lied about his whereabouts, stating that he'd been playing poker with friends all night. His pals debunked that alibi, recallingthat he'd left early and they never saw him again that night.
On further questioning, Rouse changed his story. He thought maybe he'd come home and gone to bed on the night in question. Or maybe he got up and drove to a nearbystore—but maybe not. Detectivescould never nail down a specific time-frame for Rouse's movements, so he remained a suspect. However, in pre-DNA America, there was no evidence to arrest the airman.
The coroner concluded that Ainsworth had been badly beaten and strangled with a "military-style"web belt that had a picket-fence pattern. Her shoulder had multiple fractures, indicating a brutal assault. Investigatorsfound semen on a rug that lay underneath her.
Born in Ireland, Ainsworth had lived in Niceville for 5 years. Divorced, she had two daughters and a son. She made friends easily and was loved by her co-workers. A few days after her death, Ainsworthwas buried in Niceville'sBeal Cemetery.
Nearly four decades later, in 2010, detectives submitted the semen-stained rug to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab for testing. A profile was developed, but it matched no one in CODIS or any other DNA database.
After tracking down Rouse's relatives, police learned that he left the Air Force shortly after the murders and returned to hishome stateofNew York. He died in 2006. A family member supplied police with two fedoras once owned by the suspect. These were tested and thirty-seven years after the murder, in 2012,Rouse'sDNA matched the semen sample found on the rug.
Investigators contacted Ainsworth's family to let themknow the news. Then they marked the case as "solved."
But four other similar Okaloosa County murders that occurred between 1973 and 1978remain unsolved.
On March 12, 1973, Debra Espey, 19disappeared from Okaloosa-Walton Junior College in Niceville. The Northwest Florida Daily Newsreported that"her body was found more than a month later on a dirt trail off Rocky Bayou Drive. She had been beaten severely, possibly with a tire iron that was recovered nearby." Naked from the waist down, the crime seemed to be a sexual assault that ended in murder. Like several of the other murder victims, Espey'sclothing and possessions were scattered beside her body.
On November 23, 1973, the remainsof Theresa Dusevitch, 19, who lived inValparaiso, was located off a dirt trail onEglin Air Force Base northeast of Niceville, close to Rocky Bayou Country Club. She'd been shot in the head. Investigators believeDusevitchhitched a ride and may have been murdered by someone who picked her up. Several items layscattered beside her, including a Coca Cola can, a pack of cigarettes, and a portable record player with the initials "A. H." Several months later, a 15-year-old hitchhiker caught a ride with a man who told her he would pay her $50.00 for sex. When she refused and ran from the car, the man shot her in the hip. The bullet from the teenage girl matched the bullet that killed Theresa Dusevitch.
In June, 1975, the Daily News reported that LynnPyeatt, 19, of Memphis, Tennessee, "was vacationing on Okaloosa Island when somebody battered her and left her in the surf to drown. It happened on a deserted Air Force beach in broad daylight." (Since the murder took placeon federal property, the FBI took over the investigation.) On acrowded section of the beach, Pyeatt left her friends to go for a walk. She ended up inan unoccupied area where she was attacked. Her bikini was ripped off, and an attempt to rapePyeatt occurred. However, the perpetrator may have been scared off by passersbybecause he never completed the sex act. Pyeatt, a college student who came from an affluent family, hadbeen in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her bikini was found in the waternear her body.
According to the Fort Walton Beach/Okaloosa Daily News, "Bonnie Gayle Ryther, 27, disappeared April 4, 1978. Her body was found in a shallow grave oneweek later. She had been strangled." Sometime around midnight, Ryther left The Scene Lounge on Eglin Parkwayin Fort Walton Beach. The bartender said she was alone. Ferry Park, where Ryther's body was located, is about five minutes away from The Scene. Police found unidentified fingerprints in her car and on a beercannext to her body. Those prints have been submitted to various databanks butnever identified. Her killer has escaped detection for nearly 40 years.
All these murders were committed within a few miles of each other.
Did four different killers murder the ladies of Niceville? Or did a serial offender kill one or more? Did rogue airmen fromEglin Air Force Base commit these atrocious acts? Or was it locals or out-of-towners? And why haven't cops got a hit on DNA and fingerprints found at several of the crime scenes?
Time is ticking away. Today, the killer or killers would likely be in their mid-60s. It's distressing to think that one or more predators got away with these monstrous crimes.