Sixth-grade teacher Christy Mirack, [photo], was assaulted and brutally murdered in her Lancaster. Pa., home as she prepared to head to work in 1992

Mirack was brutally murdered in her home as she prepared to head to work teaching a sixth-grade class.
She had suffered a broken jaw in addition to the strangulation and evidence of a violent sexual assault.
A wooden cutting board, believed to have been used to attack her, was found by her body.
An autopsy revealed wounds to her neck, back, upper chest and face.

The principal of her school, concerned Mirack had not shown up for work four days before Christmas and was not answering calls, made a welfare check.
He discovered the body on her living room floor and called 911.
‘We never let this case go,’ but investigators had run out of suspects, said Lancaster District Attorney Craig Stedman.

‘This has not been easy. But one of the reasons we’ve stuck with it and never forgotten it is it’s so disturbing,’ Craig Stedman said.
The DNA left at the crime scene by the assailant never triggered a match, and Rowe had not been a suspect during years of investigation, Stedman said.
In December 1992, Rowe lived about 4 miles from the apartment Mirack shared with a roommate, but it is unclear if they knew each other.

The district attorney’s office hired a private company to use the DNA to search for relatives of the suspect, and that process identified Rowe.
‘This killer was at liberty from this crime, this brutal crime, for longer than Christy Mirack was on this earth alive,’ Stedman said at a news conference.
‘And they steered us in the path of holding him finally accountable.’