CLEVELAND — U.S. Marshals announced that after 60 years investigators were able to extract DNA from escaped inmate Lester Eubanks' clothes and enter it into the Combined DNA Index System.
Eubanks' whereabouts have been unknown since the 1970s.
On November 14, 1965, 14-year-old Mary Ellen Deener was walking to the laundromat in Mansfield to help her family with laundry when Eubanks brutally murdered her.
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A jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. In 1972, his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
On Dec. 7, 1973, Eubanks was allowed to go Christmas shopping in the Columbus area with other inmates. He never returned.
The Marshals' cold case unit has been searching for Eubanks since 2016, when the case was turned over to it.
Over the last several months, the Cold Case Unit has worked to extract DNA from the clothing he was wearing on the night of the murder and was finally successful.
His DNA has been put into the CODIS, which holds local, state and national databases of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence and missing persons.
The Cold Case Unit is hopeful this new information will help them find Eubanks, who is one of the U.S. Marshals' 15 Most Wanted Fugitives.
If he is still alive, he is 81 years old.
Eubanks was last seen in Southern California in the 1970s going by the alias of “Victor Young.”
He was known to be in the areas of Gardena, South Central, Long Beach and North Hollywood.
It is believed that Eubanks worked as a janitor at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, California, in the late 80s or early 90s.
A reward of up to $50,000 is available to anyone who provides information that leads to the location of Eubanks and the closure of this decade-long case.
“We will not rest until this case is closed. This new evidence is directly due to the perseverance of our two Cold Case Investigators who are continuously looking for new routes to pursue, and to the diligence of Dr. Nasir Butt and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s staff who took the time to re-examine old evidence and were able to extract Eubanks’ DNA that we believe will lead to his arrest," US Marshal Pete Elliott said.
