A nearly half-century-old cold-case murder of two young women in Virginia has finally been cracked with the arrest of an 80-year-old man in New York, police said Tuesday.
Ernest Broadnax was linked through some recently found DNA evidence to the double slaying, which occurred at a Virginia Beach motel in 1973 and was probed as part of a possible serial-killer pattern.
He’s been living since at least 1990 in the Big Apple and was nabbed Monday on a Virginia arrest warrant by the NYPD’s Cold Case Apprehension Squad in a Hollis Avenue home in St. Albans, Queens.
He has been charged with two counts of murder and one count of rape in the slaughter of Lynn Seethaler and Janice Pietropola, two 19-year-olds from Pittsburgh who were vacationing in the resort town.
Virginia Beach police said a “strong” lead surfaced in the case in the fall of 2018, which sources told The Post was DNA evidence eventually linked to Broadnax. Sources said he also made an admission to cops that linked him to the crime.
He is expected to be extradited on April 22.
Broadnax has been described by neighbors as a recluse who actually hinted at a dark past.
“He told me he did something years ago, that he hurt somebody,” a 62-year-old neighbor, who declined to give his name, told The Post. “But he didn’t say anything about killing two people. Damn!”
Police say the crime came in the early morning of Saturday, June 30, 1973, and it was so evil it shocked the community.
Broadnax allegedly climbed through the window of quaint seaside motel cottage that the two women had been renting near the oceanfront.
It was their last night in the town; they were scheduled to check out and return home the next afternoon.
Seethaler, a secretary, had been strangled, shot in the cheek and temple and slashed in the throat with a wine bottle.
Pietropola, an editorial employee at a financial magazine, was raped, strangled and shot three times on the right side of the head.
The women, who were high-school pals, were found in separate rooms, partially clad, with one nude from the waist down.
When their bodies were discovered after they failed to check out, every available detective was put on the case.
But no clues were found at the time, and the violence in the town continued. At least eight other women were killed in the oceanfront area of Virginia Beach over the next 12 years and even more went missing, WTKR in Norfolk reported.
In 2011, Virginia Beach police told the outlet for the first time that all of the victims, including Seethaler and Pietropola, were killed by a serial killer. Although their murders were different, they all had one thing in common: their appearance. The women who were found dead or who disappeared were all white, attractive young women between the ages of 18 and 25.
DNA evidence was recovered from Seethaler and Pietropola’s crime scene and retested by the FBI in 2011, the station said. DNA from two other murders were also recovered and retested using modern technology.
Officials wouldn’t say if Broadnax is a suspect in any of the other crimes. He was charged in a Queens burglary in 1990 and spent two years at an upstate prison.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona