Evidence from a cigarette butt used to identify suspect in 27-year-old cold case, detectives say

A cigarette butt left at the scene of an unsolved Washington state homicide in 1995 provided the DNA that Kitsap County Sheriff's Office detectives used 27 years later to identify the man they believe shot 61-year-old Patricia Lorraine Barnes multiple times in the head before leaving her body in a ditch.

The Sheriff's Office announced on Wednesday that DNA collected from Barnes' body as well as from the sleeping bag where she was stuffed on Aug. 25, 1995, before her remains were left in a ditch in South Kitsap matched that of Douglas Keith Krohne, who died in 2016 in Nogales, Arizona.

The homicide case was reopened by detectives in April 2018, one of 18 unsolved murder cases the office decided to take on.

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"The linchpin in this case for me was that a cigarette butt was found at the body dump location with the same DNA (as three items on or within the body),"  KCSO Detective Mike Grant said.

Cigarette butts have previously been used by police to tie suspects to crimes in several states, including Idaho, Oklahoma and Texas.

On Aug. 25, 1995, Kitsap County Sheriff's Office deputies and detectives responded to Peacock Hill Road after a passerby found human remains in a ditch alongside the road.

The body was identified as Barnes, a Seattle resident, a homeless woman who bounced between shelters in Seattle and frequently stayed around the Pioneer Square area, according to Kitsap Sun archives.

Barnes had been shot twice in the head, found without clothing and partially covered by a sleeping bag in the ditch, Grant said. Barnes' pink curlers were found near the body. Her clothes were never recovered.

The Kitsap County Coroner's Office determined the cause of death to be multiple gunshot wounds to the head and the manner of death was homicide.

About 130 individual evidence items were collected at the scene where Barnes' body was located. Detectives published an artist's drawing of a "person of interest" last seen with the victim, but agencies weren't able to identify a suspect at that time. The investigation eventually stalled. 

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After deciding to reopen the case in 2018, detectives reviewed the evidence and photographs from the scene, re-interviewed detectives previously assigned to the case, and sent the physical evidence to Washington State Crime Lab as well as two private forensic laboratories in Texas and Florida for DNA testing.

On Dec. 22, 2021, one of those private labs — Othram Labs Inc. — provided the name of a potential candidate for the DNA that KSCO believed to belong to the suspect. The name was discovered after advanced forensic genealogy processes were completed by the private lab, including searching genealogical databases for genetic relatives to a DNA profile for an unknown suspect.

Based on this information, KCSO contacted the Nogales Police Department in Arizona and Pima County Medical Examiner's Office to inquire about the name provided by the lab, and it was determined that the person had died of accidental causes in 2016.

On Feb. 7, the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab concluded that the DNA of the subject who died in Arizona was Douglas Keith Krohne. Krohne was identified as matching the suspect profile in the murder of Barnes.

The relationship of Krohne and Barnes remains unknown, Grant said.

According to Kitsap Sun archives, Barnes was in the downtown Seattle area with a 30- to 35-year-old white man when the two told another man that they planned to eat at Courthouse Park and then go to Federal Way.

Krohne had previous addresses in Seattle and Tacoma. He would have been 33 at the time of the murder in 1995. Krohne has a criminal history in Washington state, including five felony convictions. One was a 1984 conviction for first-degree robbery. He was also arrested in 1994 in Pierce County on suspicion of second-degree kidnapping, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Follow Peiyu Lin on Twitter: @peiyulintw