A decades-long mystery surrounding the 1960 murder of an 8-year-old Chicago girl has finally been solved, and investigators say the killer was one of their own — a man who would go on to spend nearly three decades as a Chicago Police Department detective.
Gloria Kowalewicz was abducted on November 12, 1960, while walking alone to morning mass at St. Mary of Mt. Carmel Church on Chicago’s South Side. She was found shot twice in the head and left in a ditch at a forest preserve southwest of the city. Her body was discovered by a passing motorist who noticed her brightly colored dress.
For 65 years, the case went unsolved despite a massive investigation involving thousands of interviews and hundreds of leads. Evidence collected at the scene including a bullet, Gloria’s clothing, and a fingerprint lifted from the strap of her purse was carefully preserved but never matched to a suspect.
The breakthrough came in 2024 when the FBI used genealogical DNA technology — the same method that identified the Golden State Killer — to analyze semen found on Gloria’s clothing. That analysis pointed to Thomas F. McInerney Jr. a 24-year-old patrol officer at the time of the murder who later rose to the rank of detective within the CPD.
Investigators confirmed the identification by matching McInerney’s fingerprints from his 1959 CPD job application to the print recovered from Gloria’s purse strap. McInerney retired from the department in 1987 after 28 years of service and later worked as an investigator for the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Nevada where he was even named Outstanding Federal Defender Investigator in 2003.
McInerney died in Las Vegas in 2006 at the age of 70 meaning he will never face justice for the crime.
The Chicago Police Department issued a statement saying McInerney should never have worn the CPD star and called it devastating that he was never held accountable during his lifetime. Gloria’s brother Adam Kowalewicz who was an infant when his sister was killed expressed grief that the killer lived out his life without consequences.
Police have not yet determined why McInerney targeted Gloria. Though his parents lived less than a mile from the Kowalewicz family there is no known prior contact between McInerney and the child.
The FBI is now reviewing whether McInerney may be linked to other unsolved crimes from that era. His DNA has been entered into the CODIS national database as investigators pursue additional leads.