The News Journal from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 8

www.delawareonline.com A8 THE NEWS JOURNAL SATURDAY, JAN. 21, 2006 Arrest: Suspect has record in Del. dating to 1981; no bail was set day," state Correction spokes-. weapon during a felony. conduct, burglary and assault.

he was a match," Marvel said. woman Beth Welch said Friday ln Cannon was being held at the Staner Estehan Parra contnhu'ed Sussex Correctional Institution this article, with no bail, and has been charged with murder, burglary Contact Tem Sanmtl W771 and possession Of a deadly ortsanginitideiawareonline.com. He was convicted in 1996 of escape after conviction while serving one year for violation of probation at Plummer House. "Between then and now, we haven't seen him until yester spokeswoman for the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation, said Cannon violated his probation in November and is wanted. No one had ever questioned Cannon about the Delaware homicide, Marvel said.

"We did not even know who Gilbert Cannon was until we got the hit in November that told us In hindsight, earlier mug shots of Cannon taken when he was arrested in 1991, bear a resemblance to the original composite, he said. Cannon's criminal record in Delaware, which dates to 1981, includes convictions for robbery, theft, escape after conviction, resisting arrest, disorderly FROM PAGE A1 Abbott said she knew the key to the case would be DNA. "I never completely let that go, because I knew the DNA had been entered in the national database," Abbott said. "So I knew it could have come up at any time, like roulette." She said she didn't understand who would want to harm her beloved mother. "The family has been divided because there has been so many questions and heartbreak about our mother's murder," she said.

Abbott said the siblings have New Year's Resolution 5: A NEW KITCHEN! been estranged in recent years. ir- I 1 Uvi fj -f A To this day the two sisters said they don't understand why their brother gave a ride that night to Cannon. Charles Holden, Donovan's son, was not at Friday's press conference and could not be reached. Tv ft. The slaying estranged Diana Abbott from her brother.

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When he got to the intersection of Del. 14 and Killen Pond Road, he asked the stranger to get out, Holden told The News Journal in a 2001 interview. A struggle ensued, and the hitchhiker tried to attack him with "a large screwdriver or knife or something," he said. Holden left the man near the intersection and took a different route home so the hitchhiker wouldn't follow. But when Holden arrived at his trailer, located on his family's 163-acre farm on Kent 384, he saw the hitchhiker peering through the window.

Startled, Holden drove back to Hardees, about four miles away, and called police. He didn't return home until the trooper met him at about 3 a.m. at the restaurant. Police dispatchers did not immediately send out a trooper when Holden called at 1:19 a.m. because the "suspicious person" complaint was low priority.

When the trooper drove to the farm with Holden, she found nothing amiss at the trailer, which was about 60 feet away from Donovan's farmhouse. When the two Went inside the farmhouse, the trooper found Donovan stabbed more than a dozen times in her bedroom. Homicide Sgt. Keith Marvel said Friday investigators still have no motive for the slaying. In the weeks following the killing, detectives released a composite sketch of the hitchhiker described by Holden and others who saw him that night.

Long, national search Few tips came in. TV broadcasts like "Unsolved Mysteries" and a 2001 show on FBI profiling on the Discovery Channel failed to crack the case. FBI profilers, who consulted on the case in 2001, concluded Donovan knew her killer. But Marvel said Friday there is no indication the two knew each other. MacLeish said detectives conducted numerous interviews over the years and sent the extensive evidence to the FBI crime lab for analysis.

"A DNA profile for the suspect did not exist at the time," MacLeish said. But homicide detectives didn't give up. They reinvestigated the cold case in 2001. They sent blood samples, again, to the FBI lab to identify the blood found at the scene. In May 2004, the blood samples were taken to the state Medical Examiner's Office in Wilmington and submitted to a national DNA database.

Md. DNA laws change course The news that homicide detectives had awaited came in November. Maryland State Police told them DNA from convicted robber Cannon matched the evidence taken from the scene of a 1991 homicide in Delaware. Maryland State Police spokesman Sgt. TO.

Rouse said state law requires DNA samples be taken from all convicted sex offenders and felons. Maryland Division of Correction spokeswoman Maj. Priscilla Doggett said Cannon was released from the Maryland system in September 2004 after serving more than seven years of a 12-year robbery sentence. That's when his DNA was taken. Authorities said Cannon had earned good-time credits and was placed on mandatory supervision, requiring him to report to a parole supervisor.

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