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Could a serial killer have murdered Sarah Cherry?

It was one of the most horrific murders in Maine history and one of the most controversial murder cases. A 12-year old girl abducted and brutally murdered in a rural Maine town, an investigation and prosecution with many troubling shortcomings and twists, and a man convicted for the crime who was in police custody for many hours before forensic science says she died. Thirty four years on the Sarah Cherry case and Dennis Dechaine’s conviction still hang over the state’s legal community.

Now Dechaine has been granted another chance to test crime scene evidence using cutting edge DNA technology. And as I report in today’s Maine Sunday Telegram, some think they might find notorious serial killer Richard March Evonitz’s genetic material. The chilling parallels between Evonitz’s crimes and the Cherry case and why the serial killer of children was in Maine in 1988-1989 explored in the story.