Maryland police say they have few new clues about the identity of who killed Rachel Morin, a mother of five from Bel Air, after announcing last week they found a DNA sample matching the unidentified man they believe to be the murderer.
“He still poses a threat wherever he’s laying his head and we need to get him off the street,” Harford County sheriff Jeffrey Gahler told NewsNation on Friday.
“The public will not be safe until we get him in custody.”
On 17 August, the sheriff’s office announced it used DNA evidence collected at the scene of Morin’s 5 August homicide to identify a potential suspect.
The genetic material matched a sample found at the scene of a March home invasion in Los Angeles where a young girl was attacked.
“Unfortunately that suspect has not been positively identified, but he did leave behind his DNA,” Harford County police colonel William Davis said during a press conference announcing the discovery. “Based on the DNA evidence, we consider the individual in the video we received from the Los Angeles Police Department to be the person that murdered Rachel Morin on August 5.”
The sheriff’s office believes that a man filmed exiting the LA home invasion is the same person who killed Rachel Morin.
Maryland police believe Rachel Morin was killed by a man seen exiting a home invasion in Los Angeles earlier this year, based on DNA evidence— (Harford County Sheriff’s Office, Maryland Police)
Since then, police have not made any major developments in identifying the individual seen on surveillance footage, who was described by police as a Hispanic man in his 20s.
“The majority of tips that come in aren’t going to really advance the investigation. We’re still looking for that one,” Sheriff Gahler told NewsNation. “Someone out there knows who this individual is in the picture…They need to come forward and share that information.”
Otherwise, the law enforcement official warned, the killer is “not going to stop.”
Other than the match to the LA crime scene, police are still puzzled about the suspect’s whereabouts, with Sheriff Gahler saying the individual could no longer be in the US for all police know.
The Harford County Sheriff’s Office has said it is working with DNA specialists at the FBI to continue probing the evidence.
Morin, a mother of five living in Bel Air, Maryland, was last seen heading to the Ma & Pa Trail around 6pm on 5 August.
Her boyfriend Richard Tobin reporter her missing later that evening.
Morin’s body was found the following day, and her death is being investigated as a homicide.
Police have previously said a group of five witnesses were on the trail at the same time Morin was killed.
“We are grieving. We need the time and space to grieve as a family. We have not forgotten our community,” Morin’s mother wrote in a social media post this month.
