By Mark Wozniak
Buffalo, NY – Buffalo Police have made an arrest in a 14-year-old cold case.
Fifty-five year-old Dennis Donohue of Kenmore was arraigned Tuesday on a second degree murder charge. He's accused in the 1993 strangulation death of Joan Giambra inside her Hillside Avenue home in South Buffalo.
Her then 11-year-old daughter, Kathleen, was found in a state of shock on top of her mother's body. Kathleen told the "Buffalo News" Tuesday that she's relieved her mother's alleged killer has been found.
Authorities say DNA evidence helped the Cold Case Squad solve the case.
Regarding the other murders, detectives were very tight lipped. But a check of news accounts from the mid 1990s found that one of the murders involved a 13-year-old Buffalo girl in February 1993. The girl's mother, Lynn DeJac, was convicted of the murder. DeJac's former boyfriend was Dennis Donohue. She claimed Donohue could have killed the girl.
Donohue was also questioned in the 1975 strangulation death of a 50-year-old woman who lived in the apartment building where he was residing. But authorities at the time said Donohue had an alibi and he was never charged.