Chicago Police Tie Late Detective to 1960 Child Killing

Chicago Police Tie Late Detective to 1960 Child Killing

Chicago police say DNA and a fingerprint tie a former Chicago police detective, now dead, to the 1960 abduction and killing of 8-year-old Gloria Kowalewicz, a case that stayed unsolved for 65 years.

Gloria was abducted on Saturday, Nov. 12, 1960, while walking a few blocks from her home to morning Mass at St. Mary of Mt. Carmel Church. About four hours later, her body was found in a ditch at a forest preserve southwest of Chicago. She had been shot.

Investigators preserved a bullet, her coat and shoes, and a white communion purse that held her prayer book. A fingerprint was lifted from the purse strap. A police task force interviewed more than 1,300 people, but the case went cold.

A male DNA profile was developed from the evidence in 2010. In 2024, Chicago police asked the FBI to help analyze the preserved evidence using investigative genetic genealogy, which identified Thomas F. McInerney Jr. Police then matched the fingerprint on the purse strap to prints McInerney submitted when he applied to join the department in 1959.

McInerney joined the Chicago Police Department in 1959, later became a violent-crimes detective and retired in 1987. He died in 2006 at age 70, so no charges can be brought.

"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 in a statement. Police also said Gloria's parents died before learning who killed their daughter.

The Cook County State's Attorney's Office is reviewing cases that may have involved McInerney, and the FBI, which has entered his DNA into its national database, is checking whether he can be connected to other unsolved crimes. As of Oct. 26, 2026, no other case had been publicly linked to him.

Gloria was 8 years old and on her way to church on a Saturday morning when she was taken.