AURORA | Police today released composite pictures of a suspect in the 1984 slayings of three members of the Bennett family — one of the city’s most brutal and notorious cold cases.
In a statement Thursday, Aurora police said they worked with Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA technology company in Virginia. Police said the company specializes in DNA phenotyping, a process of predicting physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence.
The pictures, which police said are based on predictions about ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling and face shape, show what the suspect would have looked like when he was 25-years-old in 1984, and what he could look like today.
Police say that between 9 p.m. Jan. 15, 1984 and 10 a.m. Jan. 16, 1984, 27-year-old Bruce Bennett, his wife, Debra, 26, and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa, were slain inside their home on the 16300 Block of East Center Drive. An autopsy found that Debra died from blunt force trauma. Additionally, autopsies determined that Bruce and Melissa died from blunt force trauma as well as sharp force injuries, consistent with a knife. Police said Melissa had been sexually assaulted.
A second child, the Bennetts’ 3-year-old daughter, was also attacked but survived her injuries.
Police have said a hammer was likely used in the attack on the Bennetts.
In 2010 police said DNA at the scene linked the attack to a similar hammer attack that killed a Lakewood woman a few days prior to the Bennett slayings.
Police are asking anyone with information on the case to call Aurora police Detective Steve Conner with the Homicide Unit Cold Case Squad at 303-739-6190 or e-mail him at swconner@auroragov.org.