NEW ALBIN, Iowa – A retired railroad worker who lived in this Minnesota-Iowa border town for 30 years has been identified almost for certain as the I-65 rapist of the late 1980s. There will be no arrest. Harry Edward Greenwell is dead. He died  in 2013, the victim of cancer at age 68.  Indiana police recently linked Greenwell to the I-65 crimes, so-called because  all along Interstate 6. Police used a new criminality process called “investigative genealogy.” Crime scene DNA was uploaded to genealogy databases to find genetic connections in family trees. “Through this match it was determined that the probability of Greenwell being the person responsible for the attacks was more than 99%,” said Glen Fifield of the Indiana State Police. In Iowa, Greenwell was survived by a wife, son and daughter. His obituary said he enjoyed organic gardening, selling his organic produce at a local farmers market, traveling, reading, wordsmithing, following college sports, and selecting winning thoroughbred horses. Not mentioned in the obituary was a long criminal record — not to mention the rapes and murders. “Greenwell was in and out of prison several times, even escaping from jail on two separate occasions,” Fifield of the Indiana State Police said. During the time the rapes occurred Greenwell was  traveling frequently in the Midwest, he said.

I-65 motel night clerks

A commonality of the murders was their proximity to the Interstate 65 corridor. I-65 runs from Gary, Indiana, to Mobile, Alabama. Also, the victims all were motel night clerks.

> February 1987: Vicki Heath at the Super 8morel in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. The motel lobby showed signs of a fight. A telephone being uprooted from the wall. The body was  found by behind a trash bin.

> March 1989: Margaret “Peggy” Gill at a Days Inn in Merrillville, Indiana. She was sexually assaulted and shot twice in the head. The body was dumped in a back hallway. Taken from the motel: $179. The weapon: A .22 caliber handgun.

> March 1989 (four hours later): Jeanne Gilbert at a Days Inn in Remington, Indiana. She was assaulted and shot. Her body was dumped the roadway. Taken was  $247 was taken. The weapon: The the same .22 caliber handgun

An early break in the case  occurred after a female  night clerk at a Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana, was sexually assaulted and stabbed but escaped. She gave police a useful physical description of the suspect and details of the crime. Another break came in Rochester ,Minnesota, where another woman was assaulted and got away.  She described her assailant similarly.

Greenwell. He shunned being photographed. This image is from an early jail term.

New Albin profile

New Albin, population 430, is along Mississippi River backwaters on the Iowa-Minnesota border. It’s 30 miles downriver from LaCrosse via LaCrescent on Minnesota Highway 46. The town is on a freight stub of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Greenwell worked for the CP.

More scrapes with the law

Greenwell was arrested in 1989 for a traffic violation and a domestic incident in LaCrosse. He was sentenced to 15 months probation for criminal trespass. In 1998 Greenwell was arrested for felony possession in Allamakee County, Iowa. It’s the county where new Albin is located. A month later he was arrested for violating a restraining order.