A suspect has been arrested for a 52-year-old cold case murder in Connecticut, authorities announced Thursday.
Janet Couture, 21, was stabbed to death in her East Hartford home on Oct. 13, 1973 after a man climbed through a window and attacked her while she was alone.
George Legere was an early suspect in the case, but police did not have enough evidence to arrest him at the time.
A major breakthrough came in 2021 when Legere was arrested by Avon police for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman in a separate 1984 cold case. Legere had been incarcerated on an unrelated matter in Massachusetts in 2019, at which time his DNA was taken. That later matched a sample in a national database and connected him to the attack.
The now-77-year-old was arrested on Wednesday at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, where he’s already serving a 25-year sentence for the 1984 case.
“The Avon Police Department’s arrest of Legere assisted East Hartford investigators with uncovering additional closed cases dating back to the 1960s involving Legere assaulting women, revealing disturbing similarities to Couture’s murder,” East Hartford police said in a news release.
“Bringing closure to victims’ families is a top priority for our team of detectives,” said East Hartford Police Chief Mack S. Hawkins. “We are committed to pursuing justice in every case, no matter how much time has passed. For the Couture family, this is especially significant, and we hope it brings them some measure of peace.”
