Body found in 1988 was misidentified

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On July 18, 1985, a 21-year-old secretary for the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office walked into her apartment on South Spring Avenue in St. Louis. She was never seen alive again.

More than 25 years later, Jefferson County law enforcement say they’ve identified Cynthia Horan’s remains using DNA technology — and that those remains were previously identified as another woman’s.

In 1988, the remains were found south of Old Highway M and west of Antonia, said Lt. Gene Coombs, who also said he is working the case. Using facial reconstruction, the remains were identified as those of Julie Adams, a University City resident who was last seen in March 1988 in East St. Louis.

Decades later, Coombs began looking into a cold case of Geneva Adams (no relation to Julie), who disappeared from Herculaneum in 1976. He then “started looking harder” at the Horan case, believing that the same person of interest was linked to both women.

“We doubted the integrity of the original identification,” Coombs said of the remains. “We got a DNA profile from one of the victim’s siblings, and we were able to recover the remains.”

It was a match. Horan’s death was then classified as a homicide by the St. Louis medical examiner, Coombs said.

Coombs declined to name the person of interest who has been identified, but said he is a registered sex offender who is currently incarcerated in federal prison for possession of a sawed-off shotgun. His release date is in 2019.

Coombs said the Horan identification was made more than a year ago but that the department delayed releasing the information to the media so they could interview the person of interest. That interview was conducted earlier this month, he said.

Coombs said they are still trying to locate surviving relatives of Julie Adams. Her adoptive mother is deceased, he said.

“Adams is still considered a missing person,” he said.