After being recently charged with the 1989 stabbing murders of his in-laws in Vermont, police are looking into if an upstate New York man is connected to any cold case homicides in New York.
Two days after his return to Vermont from New York to face charges in the killings of George Peacock, 76, and Catherine Peacock, 73, Michael Louise was arraigned in Vermont Superior Court in Rutland. After cutting-edge DNA analysis connected Louise to the crime in Danby, he was prosecuted.
When Louise was charged, she entered a not guilty plea.
The prosecution made his case for Louise’s detention without bail by bringing up the possibility of her connections to other instances.
Later on Friday, the New York State Police revealed that detectives in central New York are looking into potential connections between Louise and a number of cold case killings in the area. A representative gave no specifics or indication of which situations.
According to Adam Silverman, a spokesman for the Vermont State Police, who was watching the court remotely, Louise entered the pleas and was then ordered detained without bail.
About two weeks after the Peacocks’ deaths at their Danby house in September 1989, Louise, 79, who was married to one of the Peacocks’ daughters, was named as a suspect. According to authorities, the residence was secure and showed no traces of a forced entry or the removal of anything of value.
According to a police affidavit in the case, investigators at the time gathered circumstantial evidence linking Louise to the deaths, but it was insufficient to bring charges against him.
Louise gave inconsistent accounts as to whether he had left Liverpool, New York, where he lived, to fly to Vermont on September 13, 1989, the day the Peacocks were allegedly slain. On September 17, neighbors went to check on the couple and found their dead.
On October 6, 1989, the New York State Police examined Louise’s automobile and during their investigation they found what was first thought to be a tiny human blood stain on the driver’s side floor mat. The blood deposit wasn’t big enough to type at the time.
The Vermont Forensic Lab tested the blood for DNA in 2000, but more recent testing is more accurate. A part of it matched a sample collected from George Peacock after retesting in October 2020.
Police have not officially offered a theory as to why the victims were killed.