MISSOULA — Investigators have solved a 46-year-old cold case that shocked the Missoula community and left five-year-old Siobhan McGuinness dead, her body left in a drain culvert near the Turah exit. Siobhan was reported missing from her northside home on February 5, 1974, and two days later her body was found off of Interstate 90.
The murder puzzled investigators for more than four decades until an advancement in DNA technology allowed for evidence to be retested. That - along with the help from national agencies - led investigators to Arkansas native Richard William Davis.
Officials say Davis was just passing through Missoula in 1974, and during a news conference on Monday they said that Davis died in 2012.
Siobhan’s family says that they are extremely thankful for all of the investigators' efforts over the past 46 years: "We are just completely overwhelmed by the science the dedication and the hard work that has gone on and everything that you have done," Sioban's half-sister Oona said.
"Forty-six years is a very long space in time to be in a state of unending grief and immense sorrow for one as beautiful and as amazing as Siobhan," her father Stephen said.
The Lewis & Clark County Sheriff's Office said in a "cold case" post on Facebook in 2015:
Her name was Siobhan McGuinness. She vanished from a street near her house in Missoula, Montana, on February 5, 1974. She was found the following day, her 5-year-old body stuffed in a culvert. She had been beaten, raped, and stabbed. Her murder was officially a cold case by 1976. In 2008 the case was re-opened but still remains unsolved. Police have tried to find a match to DNA culled from the evidence in this case, with no results. Per the True Crime Report website: "She died just before the snow fell that February night, a victim of something much colder than ice. Hers is the kind of death no one can -- or should -- ever forget."
Law enforcement says that because Davis died before he could be interviewed about the case, no motive for the killing is known.
Othram Inc., of Texas is the company which was able to analyze the DNA samples which made this identification possible.
