DNA Breakthrough Helps Idaho Officials Crack Murder Case That Went Unsolved for Decades

DNA evidence from over four decades ago has linked the murder of a young Idaho mother to a convicted killer.

The body of Mary Tracy, a 24-year-old mother of two young daughters, was discovered stabbed to death off a Boise highway two days after she went missing in June of 1980. A mysterious newspaper clipping from 1967 was found with her body, but no substantial leads or suspects materialized in the following decades.

According to a YouTube video posted by the Ada County Sheriff's Office, in August 2023, one of Tracy's daughters advocated for reopening the investigation and fresh DNA analysis on a sexual assault kit found a match with Charles Strain, a convicted murdered with a criminal history in the Pacific Northwest. Strain lived in Idaho at the time of Tracy's death, and allegedly confessed to killing a woman around the same time.

Several years after Tracy's murder, Strain was convicted in the 1981 murder of his stepdaughter and died in 2007 while serving his prison sentence.

While the DNA match successfully tied Strain to the crime, investigators continue to seek additional information, including insights from those who worked at the Sunliner Motel in 1980, where Tracy may have been killed, and a friend named "Lisa," who could have been one of the last people to see her alive.