Two Wisconsin brothers who spent nearly 25 years in prison have been exonerated, thanks to genetic genealogy.
In 2000, David Bintz, 69, and his brother, Robert Bintz, 68, both of Green Bay, were convicted of the 1987 murder of Sandra Lison.
In early August 1987, Lison, a 44-year-old mother of two, vanished from her job as a bartender at Good Times in Green Bay, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reports.
Her remains were found shortly after in the Machickanee Forest in Oconto County, 30 miles away.
She had been strangled, an autopsy found, local outlet WFRV reports. Authorities said they found evidence that she had been sexually assaulted before she was killed, the outlet reports.
Police questioned the brothers, who were at the bar that night. David allegedly got into an argument with Lison over the bill, Fox 11 News reports.
For years, the case went cold.
Then, in 1998, when David was serving a sentence for another crime, his cellmate told authorities that David had confessed in his sleep to killing Lison, WFRV reports.
Despite a lack of physical evidence linking the brothers to the crime, prosecutors said they had robbed Lison before killing her, WFVR reports.
In 2000, they were both sentenced to life in prison.
Their luck changed in 2018, when the Great North Innocence Project of Minnesota began looking into the case.
When local genealogists were unable to find evidence linking the brothers to the murder, Jim Mayer, the project’s legal director, enlisted the help of Investigate Genetic Genealogy Center at Ramapo College in New Jersey, Fox 11 reports.
In 2023, IGG investigators formed a genetic profile of DNA found at the crime scene and uploaded that to consumer databases, such as GEDmatch, Fox 11 reports.
Based on that information, they began looking for any relatives that matched the DNA sample.
IGG narrowed the matches to three brothers from Green Bay. One of those brothers was William Hendricks, a convicted rapist who died in 2000.
In April, the IGG obtained a DNA sample from his disinterned remains and found that there was a one in 329 trillion chance that it belonged to anyone except Hendricks, Fox 11 reports.
On Wednesday, Sept. 27, a judge granted a motion to set the two brothers free, NBC 26reports.
Today, Sandra Lison will rest in peace, because her true murderer is now known,” Judge Donald Zuidmulder said, NBC 26 reports.
“It is therefore my bounded duty to exercise and follow the law, well satisfied that I will sign judgments vacating the convictions in both of these for both of these defendants and save them free.”
Asked how the brothers could have been sentenced to life in prison despite a lack of physical evidence, District Attorney David Lasee told NBC 26, “The prosecutors and the law enforcement officers were handling this case at the outset, followed the evidence that they had at that time, and that conviction was sound.”
