The murder of Concetta 'Penney' Serra
New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut · 1973
Overview
Concetta 'Penney' Serra, a 21-year-old dental assistant, was chased through the Temple Street parking garage in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, and stabbed once in the chest on July 16, 1973. The case became one of Connecticut's most notorious unsolved murders, including the wrongful 1984 arrest of an innocent man, before forensic advances finally identified the killer. A bloody fingerprint left on a tissue box in the victim's car was matched in 1997 to Edward R. Grant, a Waterbury auto-body worker, and DNA from a bloodstained handkerchief at the scene confirmed the link. Grant was arrested in 1999 and convicted of murder on May 28, 2002, nearly 29 years after the crime.
How it was solved
The killer had bled at the scene, and that blood eventually undid him. Investigators preserved a blood-type-O sample on a man's white handkerchief and a partial fingerprint on a tissue box from the Buick Penney Serra had been driving. For decades neither could be matched. In 1997, Christopher Grice, a latent-print examiner with the Connecticut State Police Forensic Laboratory, ran the tissue-box print through the state's Automated Fingerprint Identification System and got a hit: the left thumbprint of Edward R. Grant. Grant had only entered the database because he had been fingerprinted after a 1994 domestic-violence arrest in Waterbury. After Grant's June 24, 1999 arrest, the state forensic lab tested cuttings from the bloodied handkerchief, and Dr. Henry Lee's laboratory developed a DNA profile that matched Grant, with an expected population frequency the state placed between one in 300 million and one in 6.9 trillion. A jury convicted Grant of murder on May 28, 2002, and he was sentenced on September 27, 2002, to 20 years to life. The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the conviction in April 2008.
Sources
- State v. Grant, 286 Conn. 499 (2008)
“The police found the keys to the Buick and a man's white handkerchief, both bloodied, near the end of the blood trail.”
- State v. Grant (Conn. Super. Ct. 2002)
“In 1999, Edward Grant, the defendant herein, was arrested, largely on the basis of the state's allegation that blood thought to be that of the perpetrator is consistent with a DNA profile of a sample of Grant's blood.”
- Cold Cases - Arrests and Convictions
“Edward Grant ... was convicted on May 28, 2002, of Murder ... sentenced in September 2002 to serve 20 years in prison ... the Connecticut Supreme Court ... denied his appeal in a decision issued in April 2008.”
- Forensic Evidence Solves 29-Year Cold Case Murder: A Case Study of State of Connecticut v. Edward Grant
“In 1997, examiner Christopher Grice used the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) to identify the print as belonging to Edward Grant's left thumb. Grant had been fingerprinted following a 1994 domestic violence arrest.”
- State v. Grant (944 A.2d 947, 286 Conn. 499)
“The expected frequency of this DNA profile in the general population was between one in 300 million and one in 6.9 trillion.”
- Connecticut cold cases and forensic DNA breakthroughs
“Edward Grant ... connected to the crime through DNA analysis of evidence found at the scene and analyzed by the State Police Forensic Laboratory.”
- The Murder of Concetta 'Penney' Serra (Connecticut)
“Penney Serra was a 21-year-old dental assistant in downtown New Haven, Connecticut.”