Suspect ID’d in teen’s 1996 murder, but he dies by suicide hours after police question him

(DILLON, Mont.) — A suspect was identified through DNA in the 1996 cold case murder of a 15-year-old girl in Montana. But the suspected killer won’t go to trial because he died by suicide just hours after he was interviewed by police, authorities said.

On Sept. 21, 1996, 15-year-old Danielle “Danni” Houchins was raped and suffocated in shallow water at the Gallatin River, the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office said.

The case went unsolved for decades.

A partial DNA profile from a hair found on Houchins’ body was submitted to CODIS — the nationwide law enforcement DNA database — but no matches were found, the sheriff’s office said Thursday.

The DNA was then sent to Parabon NanoLabs to try to solve the crime through genetic genealogy, according to authorities and Parabon.

Genetic genealogy takes an unknown suspect’s DNA left at a crime scene and identifies it using family members who voluntarily submit DNA samples to a DNA database. Police can then create a much larger family tree than if they only used databases like CODIS.

“In a significant breakthrough last month, DNA evidence collected at the time of Houchins’ death was matched to 55-year-old Paul Hutchinson of Dillon, Montana,” the sheriff’s office said.

Hutchinson, who worked for the Montana Bureau of Land Management for 22 years, had no criminal history and was married with two children, the sheriff’s office said.

On the evening of July 23, detectives interviewed Hutchinson for nearly two hours, authorities said.

During the interview, Hutchinson “displayed extreme nervousness … sweated profusely, scratched his face, and chewed on his hand,” the sheriff’s office said.

Early the next morning, Hutchinson called the authorities, said he needed help and then hung up, the sheriff’s office said. Responders found him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the side of a road, the sheriff’s office said.

After the suicide, authorities confirmed that the “DNA evidence was a complete match to Paul Hutchinson,” Gallatin County Sheriff Dan Springer said at a news conference Thursday.

In 1996, Hutchinson was a student at Montana State University, the sheriff’s office said. Investigators said they believe Houchins and Hutchinson didn’t know each other. The sheriff described it as a “crime of opportunity” by an “evil man.”