DNA on Discarded Cigarette Helps Lead to Arrest in a 1981 Homicide

The 1981 fatal beating of a steelworker in northwest Indiana remained unsolved for so long that the son of the original detective on the case started reinvestigating it in 2018 — and helped solve it.

Blood from the crime scene and a discarded cigarette tossed out a vehicle window at a 2023 traffic stop in Illinois eventually led to the arrest of Gregory Thurson, 64, of Eugene, Ore., on Oct. 29 on a murder charge in the death of John Blaylock, Sr., 51, who was killed in his apartment in Griffith, Ind.

That capped an investigation that began on Nov. 3, 1981. On Wednesday, Mr. Thurson, who was arrested in Oregon and extradited, is to appear in a Lake County, Ind., courtroom. His lawyer with the Lake County Public Defender’s Office could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

It is unclear what the motive for the killing was and what relationship there may have been between Mr. Blaylock and Mr. Thurson.

“I can’t say enough about his hard work and how gratifying it is to me that he was able to come behind me some 43 years later and put this all together,” Retired Detective John Mowery Sr. of the Griffith Police Department said of his son, Detective John Mowery Jr. “When he sinks his teeth into something, he just he stays with it.”

On Nov. 3, 1981, two worried steelworkers went to Mr. Blaylock’s building on a Tuesday afternoon, after he didn’t show up for his shifts on Monday or Tuesday morning. The Sunday newspaper was still outside his apartment door, which was locked, and they waited while two building employees used a master key to get inside.