DNA results still awaited 2 years later

Two years after police seized a freed killer's junked vehicle - hoping to tie him to a case involving two headless women - prosecutors still await DNA test results.

Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. is investigating whether Jack Lee Colin, 53, was involved in the deaths of Joyce Koenen, 42, of West Conshohocken, and Lisa Marie Gehris, 18, of Whitpain Township, whose dismembered bodies were found in late 1983 and early 1984. The probe also involves a third potential victim - Amy Matthews, 24, of Plymouth Meeting - who vanished in January 1984 in Norristown.

Colin, acquitted by reason of insanity in the 1972 killings of his parents, was convicted of a weapons charge based on a December 2004 search of his southern New Jersey home and is serving a seven-year sentence.

Police have long included Colin in their investigation because he lived near the victims and because of his violent history, but they never had enough evidence to make a case, Castor has said. The 2004 search turned up dirty rags in the back of Colin's station wagon, which police hoped would yield blood or hair samples. Colin owned the same car in the early 1980s. Castor said he did not know if any of the victims' DNA samples remain, but he vowed to exhume their bodies if necessary.