HOWELL, Mich. — Michigan police say they have identified a suspect in the nearly 40-year-old cold case murder of Christina Castiglione by using genealogical DNA comparisons.
Charles David Shaw, who lived in less than 5 miles from where Castiglione went missing, died in November 1983 of accidental sexual asphyxiation, according to Detective Sgt. Matt Young, who contacted the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office when his name came up as a suspect.
“When there’s a homicide, there’s normally some sort of a connection between the victim and the suspect and, in this case, there was none. That’s one of the reasons that this was 40 years in the making. There was no tips. There was no evidence. There was no indication that would lead us to Charles Shaw,” Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy said.
Who was Christina Castiglione?
Castiglione, 19, lived with her mother and father in Redford. She graduated from Redford Union High School and was active in sports, the release said. She was not married but had a steady boyfriend. She was employed by the Detroit Edison Company as a clerk in the research department and had contacted an Army recruiter prior to her disappearance.
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What happened to Christina Castiglione?
On March 21, 1983, 19-year-old Castiglione was reported missing by her mother in Redford Township, about 15 miles west of Detroit. On March 29, 1983, the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office found Castiglione’s body in the Oak Grove State Game Area, a park in nearby Livingston County’s Deerfield Township, after a tip.
Castiglione was partially clothed and her body was in a remote wooded area. Detectives found evidence that Castiglione had been strangled to death and sexually assaulted.
During the autopsy, the medical examiner found male DNA that was collected and preserved.
“The work that was done back in 1983 to preserve the evidence, to process the scene, was an outstanding effort by everybody that was at the scene, detectives as well as the responding deputies,” Murphy said.
The samples were later entered into CODIS by the Michigan State Police Crime Lab in the early 2000s, but a suspect was not identified at that time.
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Suspect ID’d
In March 2022, the Sheriff’s Office applied for and received grant funding through Season of Justice to conduct advanced DNA testing on the samples taken in 1983. Season of Justice is a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding DNA testing on unsolved cold case homicides, the Sheriff’s Office said in a press release.
In May 2022, DNA evidence from the case was sent to Othram Inc., a private forensic laboratory in Texas. Othram scientists used “forensic-grade genome sequencing” to develop a comprehensive genealogical profile from the DNA of the unknown suspect, which returned leads to authorities.
The investigation led to the identification of Shaw. His identification was confirmed by three separate familial DNA comparison tests.
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Shaw family shocked by news
Young said Shaw’s brother was shocked by the news.
“He had no idea. He was a little bit older than Charles Shaw, so he was in the military when a lot of this was going on in Charles’ life, so we wasn’t around to witness all of it first hand,” Young said.
Based on information received from Shaw’s family, the Sheriff’s Office said, he was a sex addict with a disturbing life who struggled with mental illness and his gender identity.
“Charles Shaw had several interactions with law enforcement beginning at a young age. One such interaction resulted in his arrest in 1981 for the attempted abduction of a woman in the Fowlerville McDonald’s parking lot,” the release noted.
In 1973, Shaw was arrested by the Livonia Police Department on a breaking-and-entering charge. In 1977, he was arrested by the LPD on a drug possession charge. In 1981, he was sentenced to two weeks in jail and probation for the Fowlerville incident, according to Young. And in 1982, he was arrested for larceny of women’s shoes from a Kmart.
“The cooperation of the Shaw family during the investigation was paramount to identifying Charles Shaw as the person responsible for the homicide of Christina Castiglione,” the release said. “We are hopeful that the surviving family members of Christina Castiglione, along with victims and families of other violent unsolved crimes who have been awaiting justice for decades, experience closure as genealogical DNA continues to help law enforcement advance efforts to achieve justice for victims.”
Livingston Daily
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