Free meal offer leads to arrest in 1987 killing of Pinellas woman, 82

[Zorro]

Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office detectives say DNA matches their suspect to the killing. But how they go the DNA took a clever ruse.

A man’s inability to turn down a free meal has contributed to his arrest in connection with the slaying of an 82-year-old Pinellas County woman that had gone unsolved for 36 years.

Michael Lapniewski, 55, was booked into the Pinellas County Jail Tuesday afternoon on a charge of first-degree murder in connection with the 1987 slaying of Opal Weil, a widow who was choked and beaten in her Lealman home.

DNA was a key factor in cracking the case, according to an arrest affidavit written by Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office detectives. But how they got the DNA involved a clever ruse in which they advertised a free meal at a restaurant — an offer to which Lapniewski responded.

After he finished his meal and left, detectives seized the spoon and fork he had used and submitted them for DNA testing. They were a match to hairs that had been found on Weil’s pink nightgown, her electric blanket and her bed after her killing, according to the affidavit.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/crime/2023/02/01/pinellas-sheriffs-office-cold-case-killing-arrest-dna-genealogy/