DNA match from cigarette leads to arrest in 2012 Berks County diner shooting cold case
READING, Pa. (CBS) -- A man was arrested in connection with a 2012 shooting outside of a popular diner in West Reading after DNA drawn from a cigarette butt matched up with a profile created from crime scene evidence, the Berks County District Attorney's Office announced Monday.
Vallis Slaughter, of Brooklyn, New York, was arrested last week for his alleged role in the fatal shooting of Julio Torres on March 24, 2012, the DA's office said.
Posted by Berks County District Attorney on Monday, March 25, 2024
Investigators allege Slaughter shot Torres outside of a diner in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 2012, leading to his arrest last Wednesday, March 20. Torres was involved in an argument with Slaughter and another man, Jomaine Case, in the diner's parking lot, prosecutors said. Moments later, Torres was fatally shot.
Case was arrested months after the 2012 shooting, but officials said they knew he wasn't the shooter.
Officials said surveillance video from the diner played a key part in the initial investigation into identifying Torres' killer.
Case and the alleged shooter, now identified as Slaughter, were caught on camera holding styrofoam cups before the shooting, both of which were recovered by the Berks County Forensic Services Unit. A part of the cup that was bitten off was found at the scene.
Through forensic analysis, an unknown man's DNA profile was created based on the bitten-off piece of the cup, but the DNA didn't match any former samples recovered within the forensic database at that time.
Detectives later found the suspected shooter was from New York City and had just visited the Reading area the night of the shooting.
After Berks County launched a cold case initiative in 2023, the search for Torres' killer was brought back to light.
Berks County detectives and West Reading police began to gather more evidence as to what happened before the shooting, including a cellphone photo of the alleged shooter from a party earlier in the night.
In November 2023, facial recognition software was able to identify the suspected person in the 2012 cellphone photo as Slaughter.
The next month, investigators tracked down Slaughter and found he was living in Jersey City with his mother. Detectives surveilled Slaughter for months and then found the piece of evidence that would lead to an arrest.
Investigators observed Slaughter throw a cigarette onto the ground before heading back into his mother's home one afternoon in February. Detectives recovered the cigarette butt and shared it with the Pennsylvania State Police Forensic Crime Laboratory to compare the DNA to the unknown profile created by the chewed piece of styrofoam cup from 2012.
By March, forensic analysts confirmed the DNA extracted from the filter of the cigarette butt matched the DNA profile from the bitten styrofoam cup collected from the crime scene.
West Reading police and the Berks County DA's Detectives Unit arrested Slaughter Wednesday morning in Jersey City at his mother's home, more than 11 years after he allegedly shot and killed Torres.
Slaughter is currently being held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility in New Jersey, awaiting extradition to Berks County, according to officials.