HUNTINGTON COUNTY, Ind. (WRTV) — Indiana State Police say they have identified the killer from a 1997 cold case.
According to police, on Dec. 21st, 1997, 25-year-old Angela Saco was found dead on Huntington County Reservoir property off County Road 100 East, north of County Road 100 South in Huntington County.
An autopsy later confirmed the cause of death was stab wounds.
Witnesses reported that Angela was last seen at her place of employment in Fort Wayne during the early morning hours of Dec. 21. Angela lived in Fort Wayne and had a 2-year-old son.
Police interviewed nearly 100 people to try to figure out what led to her death, but detectives were unable to develop enough probable cause to charge anyone with Saco’s murder.
State police say over the next 29 years, they continued to investigate.
In 2024, items collected and preserved at the crime scene were submitted for advanced DNA testing to a forensic genealogy company in California, founded by Colleen Fitzpatrick, an American forensic scientist and genealogist.
In February 2026, forensic genetic genealogists identified Stephen Shlater as a candidate suspect. He was later confirmed through STR testing as the contributor of the DNA at the crime scene.
Shlater was 50-years-old at the time Angela Saco was murdered.
"Ironically, he had been released from federal prison on another case in the Spring of 1997, just five months before Angela’s murder," police said in a release.
Shlater died in 2021 in Huntington County. His last known residence was in Markle, Indiana.
Huntington County Prosecutor Jeremy Nix said that if Shlater were alive today, he would be charged with the murder of Saco.
Fitzpatrick says this case is just another example of a case that would not have been solved without the use of forensic genetic genealogy.
After nearly a thirty-year puzzle, Saco's friends and family have closure.
