October 12, 2026
65-Year-Old Cold Case Cracked: The Killer Was a Chicago Homicide Detective
Headline card: The Night Desk
65-Year-Old Cold Case Cracked: The Killer Was a Chicago Homicide Detective
Graveyard Crew, this one sat on a shelf for 65 years — and the answer turns out to be the one nobody wanted to hear.
The night of November 12, 1960
Eight-year-old Gloria Kowalewicz left her family's West Englewood home on a short walk to a nearby church to receive communion. She never made it home. Her body was found in a ravine miles from the family home — she had been shot twice in the head.
The murder shocked Chicago. Local and state police launched a massive manhunt, joined by firefighters, Boy Scouts, and veterans. Investigators determined Gloria had been taken to nearby woods before she was killed, and witnesses reported seeing a little girl with a young man. But no suspect was ever identified. The trail went cold — and stayed cold for six and a half decades.
The break: a DNA match in a family tree site
Earlier this year, investigators got the break they'd been waiting for. New DNA evidence gathered from a genetic ancestry website led Chicago Police Department investigators to a suspect: Thomas Francis McInerney — a former Chicago homicide detective.
The FBI helped connect McInerney, who was 24 at the time of the murder, to the crime scene through the family-tree DNA. Further testing of DNA, fingerprints, and ballistics led the department to conclude he was responsible for Gloria's death. He was an Army veteran who lived around the corner from Gloria's family.
The twist nobody saw coming
McInerney spent 28 years on the Chicago police force — the same department that had failed for decades to find Gloria's killer. He then worked as an investigator for the Federal Public Defender's Office in Las Vegas and Reno, and was even named Outstanding Federal Defender Investigator in 2003. He was a father of five, including three daughters, and a grandfather. He died in 2006.
CPD's Chief of Detectives Kevin Bruno told the Tribune the resolution was proof "we don't forget." On the fact that the killer was a police officer, Bruno said: "The fact that he was a police officer is deeply troubling to all of us that have made a career out of this most noble profession. But at the same time, it's not something we're going to minimize or shy away from."
A family still waiting
Gloria's brother Adam Kowalewicz said he was relieved that his sister's killer had been identified, hoping it would allow his parents — both since passed — to "rest." But he is frustrated that McInerney escaped justice for his actions. "He never paid his dues," Kowalewicz told the Tribune. "You hope he's going to pay his dues with the good lord."
The Night Desk take
Sixty-five years of detectives picked up this file, and in the end it was a DNA database and a fingerprint that closed it. The cruelest part: the answer was inside the system the whole time. A homicide detective, investigating homicides, while he knew exactly what happened to an 8-year-old girl who just wanted to go to church.
If this case teaches anything, it's this: cold doesn't mean closed. Cases get solved when science catches up with the evidence — and when someone refuses to put the file back in the drawer.
Source: New York Post (citing the Chicago Tribune) — read the original report
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