DNA Test Could Identify Killer In Girl Scout Slayings

Saturday, September 8th 2007, 6:40 pm

By: News On 6

LOCUST GROVE, Okla. (AP) _ A second DNA test has been ordered in the unsolved murders of three Girl Scouts 30 years ago after the first test proved inconclusive, according to a state prosecutor.

Mayes County District Attorney Gene Haynes told â€œThe Oklahomanâ€ he has been silent about the results of the first test in hopes of deflecting attention from the victims' families. Haynes said a second test was ordered in June at a private laboratory in Texas.

``I regret news of the DNA test ever got out,'' Haynes said. ``I know the public has a right to know and all, but I didn't want the victims' families to be bothered by calls and so forth from the media.â€

â€œBut right now we're just waiting. There's nothing else we can do,'' Haynes said.

The bodies of Lori Lee Farmer, 8, of Tulsa; Michelle Guse, 9, of Broken Arrow; and Doris Milner, 10, of Tulsa, were discovered on June 13, 1977, at Camp Scott near Locust Grove in a crime that shocked Oklahomans.

Escaped convict Gene Leroy Hart became the prime suspect in the murders. A Mayes County jury acquitted him during a highly publicized trial in 1979.

Hart, then 35, was returned to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester to serve 308 years on previous rape, burglary and kidnapping convictions. He died of a heart attack two months later in the prison's exercise yard.

Since Hart's death, a public debate has festered over whether he actually killed the girls. New theories and suspects have emerged from law enforcement agents as well as hobbyists who have posted their beliefs on Internet blogs.

Haynes hopes the new DNA test will reveal a profile of the true killer. The test can separate male and female DNA while a previous test conducted in 2002 did not have that capability.

Sheri Farmer, Lori's mother, refuses to fret over the anticipation of the new test results.

``I'm not sitting around and waiting for it or anything like that,'' Farmer said recently. ``I never really held out a lot of hope on the DNA to start with. I'm not expecting any miracles.''

Watch the video: Second DNA Test Ordered In 30 Year Old Murder Case