There is no statute of limitations on murder, so police will be showing up at the Bowie High School’s Class of 1973 to talk about the night one of their graduates disappeared, only later to be found in a local swamp. Donna Dustin was celebrating her recent graduation when things turned a bit ugly.
The next time Donna was seen, later that day at around 10:30 a.m., she was a corpse, beaten savagely to death off Meyers Station Road near Bowie Race Track, an after-hours hangout for local teens. Her body was found on the Anne Arundel side of the woods.
David Cordle, an investigator with Anne Arundel County’s State’s Attorney’s Office, will speak at the reunion, asking attendees to tell him anything they saw or heard about Donna that Nov. 17.
Reunions, Mr. Cordle said, “bring a lot of people together who normally don’t come together. If you ask (them) the right questions, maybe you’ll get the kind of answers you need.”
I doubt we’ll see someone stand up and confess, but you never know what people have thought or said over the years thinking they were safe and far away from a tragic murder scene. DNA evidence is far more refined than it was 35 years ago.
But here’s an interesting stat on life in the suburbs of the big city. Of the 700 or so graduates, 39 have died.
]]>“Three were murdered, three committed suicide and others died in car crashes, overdosed or died of alcoholism. Three died while waiting for transplants or after getting transplants, three from breast cancer and three from AIDS,” Ms. Nusser said.