Cold case cracked in Kanawha County using DNA

Charleston City Police Chief of Detectives Steve Cooper says it was a call he was glad to make.

Cooper says he contacted family members of a 1999 city murder victim recently and told them police have found her killer.

The Kanawha County grand jury this week indicted Daniel Turner in the strangulation murder of Terry Clark.

Clark was murdered in May 1999 in her Lewis Street apartment in Charleston. Her naked body was found along U.S. Route 119 near Walton in Roane County. She had been strangled to death.

Lt. Cooper says DNA evidence has now linked Turner to the crime. He is currently a federal prison inmate in Tennessee and is scheduled to be arraigned in Kanawha County Circuit Court Feb. 1.

Cooper says when Turner began serving a federal prison sentence last year he had to submit a DNA sample and through a specialized system the DNA from the murder scene was a perfect match with Turner’s DNA.

Lt. Cooper says Turner actually lived just a couple of miles from where Clark’s body was found.