Associated Press

SOUTH BEND, Ind.—A man just two days away from being released from prison for a 1983 murder in the Northern Indiana town of Mishawaka now faces charges in a strikingly similar killing that had remained unsolved.

DNA taken from cigarette butts helped link Daniel Kevin Seltzer to the March 1981 killing of Gerald G. Gherardi, whose nude, strangled body was found in his ransacked apartment’s bathtub. Gherardi was 28 when he was slain.

Seltzer, 47, was charged Sept. 19 with murder in the Mishawaka man’s death.

The charges came two days before his scheduled release from prison after serving 24 years of a 50-year sentence for the murder of George Lamphere, 34, also of Mishawaka, according to Indiana Department of Correction records.

Firefighters responding to an early morning blaze in June 1983 found Lamphere’s body in his apartment, and an autopsy found that he had been choked to death.

The South Bend Tribune reported Sept. 21 that the two crimes were strikingly similar. Both men were organists who worked for area churches, were believed to be gay and Seltzer picked up each man at a bar and went with them to their apartments, the paper reported.

In both cases, the victims were strangled—Gherardi with a bedsheet wrapped around his neck—and items were taken from their apartments.

Gherardi was an organist and choir director at St. Patrick Catholic Church in South Bend, while Lamphere, also an organist, was the musical director of two area churches.

“I do recall that the manner of death in the two separate crimes was similar and that caused suspicion,” said St. Joseph County Prosecutor Michael Dvorak.

A probable cause affidavit filed Sept. 19 in support of the charges in the Gherardi case states that DNA taken from cigarette butts found at the crime scene matches Seltzer’s DNA.

According to the affidavit, Seltzer told a woman he had picked up Gherardi at a bar and had gone back to his apartment with him. He referred to Gherardi as “GGG” and one of the women noticed Seltzer carried a silver pocket watch with those initials.

Gherardi’s friends and family members told police that the victim owned two pocket watches, one gold and one silver, both of which were missing from the crime scene.

Police had interviewed more than 50 individuals in connection with the case and Seltzer was a suspect, but he was never charged until now.