Police finally solve homicide of 7-year-old Michigan boy after 65 years

The homicide of a 7-year-old Houghton boy was solved, finally, after 65 years, authorities said, using forensic DNA testing of a child's skull, court records and newspaper accounts of the original crime and police investigation.

New evidence allowed the complex case, which baffled investigators in three states, to be closed, an example, authorities said, of the diligence and perseverance of investigators and the advancements in forensic science.

It turns out, Wisconsin officials said, that a child's skeletal remains, which were found in 1959 in a culvert in Mequon, Wisconsin, was the body of Chester Breiney, a boy whose whose life "ended traumatically by the hands of his adoptive parents."

"Chester may now rest in peace as the truth of his death is known," the sheriff's office in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, said in a social media post last week . "No child should leave this Earth like Chester did."

The case also is one of the latest examples of how DNA identification has become a powerful tool worldwide for law enforcement to close, and in some instances prosecute, old murder and missing persons cases once thought to be unsolvable.

Last month, for example, human remains uncovered nearly 15 years ago during a highway widening project in Arizona were finally identified this week, partially solving the case of a missing Michigan man who was last seen nearly three decades ago.

In the more recent case, the boy's parents, Hilja and William Jutila, were arrested in 1966 after leaving Houghton and moving to Chicago. They were charged after confessing to beating the child and dumping his body, but not to killing him.

And prosecutors later dropped the charges as a result of limited evidence.

While the Jutilas have since died and won't be prosecuted, the Ozaukee County Sheriff's Office said in its post that the young boy finally "may now rest in peace."

According to police accounts:

The case began in 1959, when a child's bones were found in a ditch off Davis Road in Mequon, Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee and about a five-hour's drive from Houghton in the Upper Peninsula.

The victim was estimated to be between 6 and 8 years old.

Mequon police ran the initial investigation, following more than 200 leads.

Meanwhile, the Houghton County Sheriff's Office also was investigating another case — a missing child, Markku Jutila. Deputies coordinated the Chicago Police Department after family members of the Jutilas began asking what happened to Markku.

The Jutilas, when questioned in 1966, initially couldn't explain where their adopted son was.

Then, during a police interview, the couple "admitted to fleeing Houghton for Chicago, disposing of the child's body in a ditch in Mequon before arriving in Chicago," and the mother, "confessed to physically beating her son to death."

During psychiatric evaluations, the Jutilas claimed that Markku had been ill and was sent home from kindergarten, and that Markku had been ill for several days before he was found dead in his room and they became afraid.

Then the couple said, they left for Chicago and along the way dumped Markku's body.

Houghton County Sheriff's Department investigators contacted Mequon Police and compared notes, finding the body they had similar features to Markku Jutila and the parents were arrested, extradited to Houghton County to be prosecuted.

However, the charges were dismissed after three days of testimony during a court hearing that included Chicago police detectives, a University of Wisconsin anthropologist, someone from the Wisconsin Crime Lab and a Houghton County deputy.

A fresh look at the evidence That's where the investigative trail ended until last year, investigators said.

That's when a Wisconsin Department of Justice special agent, a Ozaukee County Sheriff's Office detective and the Madison State Crime lab analyst met up with a professor from the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh.

The professor and the analysts took another look at the boy's remains.

By tracing DNA from the remains, dental and court records, and s from the Milwaukee Journal, investigators were able to find out that Markku Jutila's birth name was Chester Breiney, with a birthday of Feb. 26, 1952, and his birth mother.

The boy was sent to an orphanage and then adopted in 1955.

Records only identified the child's mother, Josephine Breiney, who died in 2001.

The Ozaukee County District Attorney's Office reviewed the results and the positive DNA identification of the remains. But authorities said the adoptive parents had died in 1988, and "there will be no future prosecution in this case."

No living relatives of Chester Breiney could be located.

The boy's body is set to be laid to rest Friday, with funeral services at St. Peter of Alcantara Church and a burial at St. Mary's Parish Cemetery, both in Port Washington, Wisconsin.

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or