New DNA technology leads to an arrest in a 1975 stabbing death in Lancaster County

Lancaster County investigators arrested a 68-year-old man in connection with the brutal stabbing death of a 19-year-old newlywed 46 years ago using new DNA technology and genealogical research.

Police on Sunday arrested David Sinopoli, of Lancaster, in the death of Lindy Sue Biechler, on Dec. 5, 1975 inside her apartment at 104 Kloss Drive in Manor Township. He was charged with criminal homicide and denied bail. He would have been 21 at the time of the crime.

Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams held a news conference Monday to announce the development in the cold case with the help of a company specializing in genealogical DNA: Parabon Nanolabs. The arrest marks the second in a high-profile cold case for Lancaster County partnering with Parabon.

Sinopoli was not on investigators’ radar as a suspect until he turned up on a short list of possible contributors to DNA found in Biechler’s underwear, Adams said. As it turned out, he lived in her same apartment building in 1974, the year before the killing.

Cece Moore, with Parabon Nanolabs, said the short list was developed after DNA from Biechler’s underwear showed a male contributor with ancestry that came from Gasperina, Italy. The development stemmed from a “novel, nontraditional strategy” using the DNA, she said.

Parabon created a list of 2,300 people who lived in Lancaster at the time of the killing who had relatives from that town in southern Italy, including Sinopoli. That list was further pared down using gender and ages that would match the time of the crime.

When it became known that Sinopoli lived in the victim’s same apartment building, which had just four units with a shared lobby, that information was passed to Lancaster County detectives as a “highly scientific tip,” Moore said.

Investigators started watching Sinopoli with the goal of getting a sample of his DNA without him realizing it. They got that chance in February, when he took a flight out of the Philadelphia airport and discarded a coffee cup in the trash, Adams explained.

Investigators retrieved the cup, sent it out for testing to two different labs, who eventually matched the DNA to Sinopoli, Adams said.

Blood from Biechler’s pantyhose left by the suspect also matched Sinopoli in test results received in June, Adams said.

Adams would not say whether Sinopoli knew Biechler or what Sinopoli has been doing in the decades since the killing, but he lived in Lancaster County the whole time, she said. He was arrested Sunday at his home in the 300 block of Faulkner Drive, which is less than five miles from the homicide scene. It’s unclear whether he spoke to detectives or answered any questions.

Lancaster County marriage records show he has been married twice: once in 1972 and a second time in 1987. An obituary for his stepmother in 2009 listed him as still being married to his second wife at the time. His Facebook page showed him still being married to his second wife in January, when he posted that they were looking to buy a cabin outside of Lancaster.

A LinkedIn profile for him said he previously worked for more than 20 years as a color press operator for a printing company.

County officials notified Biechler’s relatives of the break in the case, including her husband at the time, who was a student at Millersville State College at the time of the killing. He asked for privacy, Adams said.

The arrest came after years of intensive work on the case, including uploading crime scene DNA to a national database and composite sketches of a possible suspect in 2020 that generated dozens of tips. None of those tips, however, named Sinopoli, Adams said.

Without Parabon’s help, Sinopoli likely never would have been identified as a suspect, Adams said.

Biechler was killed during an obvious struggle inside her home, which left blood on the inside and outside of her door and throughout her apartment. She was found by her aunt and uncle about 45 minutes after she was seen unloading her groceries.

The aunt and uncle had stopped by to exchange recipes with her, Adams said.

She had been stabbed 19 times. Several of the wounds would have been fatal by themselves, especially the thrusts that pierced her heart, investigators said. They were inflicted with two knives, one of them an 8-inch butcher knife from Biechler’s own kitchen.

The butcher knife was still lodged in her neck.

There were no signs of forced entry to her first-floor flat in the Spring Manor complex. A man’s bloody shoeprint was found in the apartment’s kitchen.

There were no signs that the killing was related to a robbery as nothing was stolen. There were signs, however, that she had been sexually assaulted, including that her jeans were unzipped.

The case is at least the third cold case solved in Lancaster County in recent years.

The district attorney last year announced charges in the death of a baby found in a trash bin in 2007. Police charged Tara Brazzle, 44, with criminal homicide after she allegedly disposed of the newborn behind a YMCA in the city.

In 2019, a popular wedding disc jockey admitted to killing a school teacher named Christy Mirack in 1992 in Lancaster. Police used DNA and a genealogy website to help identify Raymond Rowe as the killer.C.