DNA, Fingerprint Link Former CPD Detective To 8-Year-Old Girl's 1960 Murder: Police

CHICAGO— For over 65 years, Chicago police never forgot about an 8-year-old West Englewood girl who disappeared on her way to church and was found hours later shot twice in the head in a crime that rocked the city. Now it appears that the mystery has finally been solved, and the killer turns out to be one of CPD's own.

Gloria Kowalewicz was abducted on Nov. 12, 1960, as she was walking to mass at St. Mary of Mount Carmel Church at Hermitage Avenue and 69th Street. But somewhere during the three-block walk, the third-grader was abducted.

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No one saw her dragged into a car, and no one heard her scream, according to news reports at the time.

A laundry truck driver discovered the little girl's body four hours later in a wooded area in Palos Hills. Gloria was the ninth child slain in Chicago within a five-year period—eight of which went unsolved.

Little Gloria's disappearance sparked a citywide manhunt for her killer. According to a 1960 article, she had made her first communion the month before at St. Mary of Mount Carmel, which was demolished in 2019. Gloria was a daily communicant and attended mass with a school chum.

At the murder scene and scattered along the highway on the way back to Chicago, evidence was collected and carefully inventoried and preserved, including a bullet, Gloria's coat, her shoes and her white communion purse containing her prayer book. Investigators also lifted a fingerprint from the strap of Gloria's purse.

A task force was formed. Members of the Chicago Police Department knocked on hundreds of doors and interviewed more than 1,300 people in the search for Gloria's killer. More than a dozen individuals were questioned under polygraph. Despite the massive effort, the case went cold.

The 8-year-old was buried out of the same church she had been walking to days earlier. Six of her little friends served as pallbearers, and 100 classmates dressed in their First Communion garb formed an honor guard.

Her parents died never knowing who their daughter's killer was.

Now, Chicago police believe they have identified Gloria's killer as a former CPD homicide detective, Thomas F. McInerney Jr., who moved to Las Vegas after his retirement, where he died in 2006 at age 70.

"His abhorrent actions not only took the life of a 9-year-old child, but left her parents and all who knew and loved her shattered as they searched for answers," Chicago police said in a statement. "Even as the case seemed frozen in time, the Chicago Police Department never forgot the little girl and never stopped searching for her killer."

At the time of Gloria's abduction, McInerney was a 24-year-old patrolman who had joined the police force in 1959. He was promoted to detective in 1964. It's unknown if McInerney was ever involved in Gloria's murder investigation.

For decades, Gloria's killer went unfound until DNA technology not available in 1960 linked the former detective to the crime, police said. A carefully preserved fingerprint collected over six decades ago and DNA from the crime scene identified McInerney as her killer, who retired from the Chicago Police Department in 1987 as a detective in violent crimes.

A male DNA profile of the potential killer was developed in 2010 from traces of semen found in Gloria's clothes, NBC Chicago reported. But the profile yielded no arrests.

In 2024, at the request of Chicago police, the FBI compared the DNA on the clothing to other genetic samples submitted to public family tree research websites and identified McInerney from the decades-old semen samples.

Chicago police further linked the fingerprint left on the strap of Gloria's white communion purse to a fingerprint on McInerney's 1959 job application. Comparisons of the former detective's DNA to other cold cases in the FBI's CODIS database to bring similar closure to other cold cases when DNA technology was not available.

"Based on the evidence in the Kowalewicz case, and law enforcement's profiling of child predators and their victimology, we are pursuing every investigative lead that may bring closure on other potential unsolved crimes that occurred during that time period in our area," the FBI said in a statement.

The day after Gloria's murder, officers investigated the possibility of a link between Gloria's slaying and the killing the next day of 14-year-old Nancy Engelson in Paulding, OH. Nancy was also abducted from a street near home and shot through the head, and her body was left in a wooded area, according to news reports of the time.

"In each case a maniac seems to be involved," the sheriff's police said. "The similarities in the two cases are such that we must check further on the Ohio murder."

Chicago Police also wondered if there was a connection between Gloria's slaying and the abduction of a Chicago girl, Peggy McCarthy. The 7-year-old told police that a stranger smoking a pipe dragged her into his vehicle as she walked through an alley on her way to school.

The man drove her to a wooded area ten miles outside the city, stood her against a tree, and ordered her to take off her clothing, news accounts said. The child was able to break free before the stranger could touch her. She ran to a nearby road where she was found crying but alive by a cab driver.

The wooded area Peggy was taken to was Robinson's Woods, the same woods where the mutilated bodies of three boys—Robert Peterson, 13, John Schussler, 12, and his 11-year-old brother Anton—had been found in a ditch in 1955. The boys' murders also remained unsolved until the late 1990s.

After moving to Las Vegas, McInerney became a federal public defender's office as an investigator, from which he retired in 2004, according to his obituary, and had been named Outstanding Federal Defender Investigator the year before. He was an Army veteran and the married father of five.

"McInerney should never have worn the CPD star, and it is devastating to accept that he was never identified and held accountable while he was alive," Chicago police said. "Though her parents have since passed away and were not able to receive justice in their daughter's murder, we hope that this news brings a measure of closure to all who knew Gloria and her story."