Family of teenager ID'd in 1999 Wilkinsburg cold case says answers could have come sooner

The identification of a woman found murdered in a vacant Wilkinsburg home in 1999 is raising new questions about why it took 27 years to put a name to the victim.

This week, Allegheny County Police confirmed advanced DNA testing identified the victim as 18-year-old Genelle Bradford. It's bittersweet news for her family. Her brother, Richard E. Bradford, said he's grateful for the breakthrough but believes answers should have come sooner.

"It's a permanent void when you don't have closure to someone you love," he said. 

For nearly three decades, Genelle Bradford's family lived with unanswered questions. Now, he wants to know why it took so long.

"I'm more upset about the length it took because my thing is you had a missing person, and then a few months later, in the neighborhood, a body is found, and nowhere in anyone's mind, was like, 'hey, wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense,'" Richard Bradford said. 

He was in sixth grade when his sister vanished while walking home from school in April 1999.

"It wasn't until morning where the seriousness set in," he said. "Frantic, calling people, calling the school, and then police got involved."

Two months later, a young woman's body was found in the basement of this abandoned home on North Avenue, just a block away from the Bradford family home.

Richard Bradford says investigators never connected the two. Instead, he says his sister was treated as a runaway.

"Genelle wouldn't run away," he said. "She was getting ready to graduate. She was preparing for prom."

He says it wasn't until just months ago that investigators showed family members a necklace recovered with the remains. He says he immediately recognized it as his sister's. For him, it raised even more questions about why the identification took so long.

"I have nothing against the current people at hand," he said. "Those in the past have to bear the guilt of their inadequacies."

This week, advanced DNA testing finally confirmed what Genelle Bradford's family had feared for years. The remains found in that basement belonged to her.

Police say the technology needed to make that identification simply wasn't available in 1999.

"The technology utilized in forensic genetic genealogy is very different than typical nuclear or mitochondrial DNA analysis," said Mandy Tinkey, the director of forensic services at the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office. "So that having been available now and not at the time is what changed, it was the entire scientific protocol utilized on those samples."

Now that investigators know who the victim is, their focus shifts to finding who is responsible for her death. They said today they do have some leads, but stopped short of naming a suspect. For Genelle Bradford's family, that's the answer they're still waiting for.

Anyone with information is urged to call police.