Oregon Public Broadcasting

Portland Police announced Tuesday they’ve solved a murder that took place in Southeast Portland more than thirty years ago.  As Pete Springer reports, the case was solved when old DNA evidence was compared to the state's current DNA database.

Eighty-year-old Rosa Cinnamon was strangled in her Southeast Portland apartment in 1976.

No suspect was ever charged with the crime.

But two years ago, a county investigator resubmitted evidence to the state police lab.

That evidence included scrapings from under Cinnamon’s fingernails-- believed to have come from a struggle with her attacker.

The lab matched the DNA to Edward Warren, an inmate who died in 2003 in the Oregon State Penitentiary. 

Detective Mary Wheat is a spokeswoman for the Portland Police Bureau.

Mary Wheat “When the DNA evidence was resubmitted in 2007, the hit came back and at that point they started looking at the whole case, making sure that Mr. Warren was in fact responsible for this murder.”

Police say Warren was living in Rosa Cinnamon’s neighborhood at the time of her murder.

He was serving two life sentences for two different murders at the time of his death in prison.