“Unfortunately, the forensic testing available at the time did not produce any leads sufficient to solve the case,” Wenatchee police said in a statement. “Since the initial investigation, numerous officers and detectives have reviewed the case, but little to no new information was developed and no arrests were made.”

That changed in early 2023 when a now-retired detective sergeant, Ryan Weatherman, picked up the case and had the evidence reviewed by a forensic scientist using modern techniques. The tests led to the isolation of DNA from an unknown man.

Weatherman arranged funding for further genealogical testing and, in July 2024, it was analyzed by the U.S. company Ortham. By the end of that year, testing had shown a “possible family lineage” and a rough geographical area where they lived.

The DNA was shared with a testing facility in Canada for comparison, and those tests zeroed in on Henry Leland, a former Kamloops resident. Leland, a homeless man for whom a housing facility in Kamloops is named, died in 2007.

Another Wenatchee police detective, Brian Hewitt, managed to track down Leland’s sister in Gold Bar, Wash. She co-operated with the investigation and provided her DNA for comparison, and it further cemented the match with her brother.

“Based on the investigation, it is believed that on or around May 14, 1986, Henry B. Leland killed Carol Traicoff,” police said in the statement released exactly 40 years after the murder.

In 2009, a transitional housing facility in Kamloops “was renamed Henry Leland House to honour the memory of Henry Leland, an Aboriginal man who lived on the streets of Kamloops for many years,” according to a news release from the housing ministry at the time.