BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – On this day in history, a grim discovery that would lead to a major criminal justice reform in Vermont.
On October 29, 1991, police found the body of Patricia Scoville. The 28-year-old was raped and murdered near Moss Glen Falls in Stowe.
The hunt for the killer went cold.
Seven years later, Scoville’s parents convinced lawmakers that Vermont should be part of a national DNA database and collect DNA from all convicted felons.
It took several years to collect and analyze those samples, but in 2005, there was a match to Howard Godfrey. He was already in prison for a violent assault on a woman.
In 2008, 17 years after Scoville was murdered, Godfrey was found guilty. He died in prison in 2013.
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