DNA from a coffee cup tossed in the trash earlier this year led authorities to charge man in teen's 1975 murder

• Investigators made an arrest in a nearly half-century-old cold case murder of a Pennsylvania teen.
• That was thanks to DNA evidence lifted from a coffee cup thrown into the trash earlier this year.

Investigators were able to make an arrest in the nearly half-century-old cold case murder of a Pennsylvania teen, thanks to DNA evidence lifted from a coffee cup thrown into the trash earlier this year, officials said.

David Sinopoli, 68, was arrested at his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Sunday and charged with criminal homicide in connection to the 1975 stabbing death of 19-year-old Lindy Sue Biechler, the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office and the Manor Township Police Department announced in a press release.

Biechler was discovered dead by her aunt and uncle inside her Manor Township apartment on December 5, 1975. Authorities said she was stabbed 19 times in her neck, chest, upper abdomen, and back.

Officials said in the press release that genetic genealogy analysis and DNA testing led police to identify Sinopoli as a possible person of interest in the case in December 2020.

Earlier this year in February, investigators secretly obtained DNA from Sinopoli from a coffee cup he used and tossed into the trash at Philadelphia International Airport.

It was determined that the DNA on Sinopoli's coffee cup matched semen found on Biechler's underwear after she was found dead.

"Lindy Sue Biechler was 19 when her life was brutally taken away from her 46 years ago in the sanctity of her own home," Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said in a statement.

Adams said she hoped the arrest in Lancaster County's oldest cold case homicide "brings some sense of relief to the victim's loved ones and to community members who for the last 46 years had no answers."

"This arrest would not have been possible without the assistance" of CeCe Moore, the chief genetic genealogist at the Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs, Adams said.