The murder of 22-year-old Susan Capistrant has stumped Roseville police ever since her body was found in an alley by a girl walking to school on April 8, 1987.

On Friday, for the first time in the history of the nearly four-decade-old case, police announced a person of interest in the killing — a now-deceased man, Robert Bruce Osborne.Deputy Chief Joe Adams told the Pioneer Press that DNA evidence recently linked Osborne to Capistrant, who died of strangulation.

“We’re not going to get into exact specifics, but, over the years, the advancement in DNA technology has led us to this scenario where we know that Mr. Osborne is a person of interest in this case,” Adams said.

Osborne died by suicide in 1996 at age 33, Adams said.

Despite the break in the case, lots of other questions remain.

Osborne’s potential involvement in Capistrant’s killing is unclear, Adams said, adding “we’ve always believed that there’s been more than one individual involved in this homicide.”

Investigators also have yet to determine how Capistrant and Osborne’s paths may have crossed, Adams said. Other than the two being roughly the same age and both living in Roseville, police said they can’t find a connection between the two.

“Everybody that we’ve talked to said that they didn’t know each other,” he said. “So we’re trying to figure out the connection. How did those two come in contact with each other that evening? They ran in completely different circles.”

Adams and detective Brady Martin asked for the public’s help trying to solve that part of the mystery.

“If a member of the public knew these two individuals or saw them together, we are asking that they contact police,” Martin said.

Martin took the lead on the cold case five years ago. He’s looked at all the old leads and angles, and new ones. He’s re-interviewed people.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not touching some aspect of the case,” he told the Pioneer Press in 2022.

An unknown caller

Capistrant spent the night of April 7, 1987, at a neighborhood bar, Patrick’s Lounge, at Larpenteur and Hamline avenues in St. Paul, with her brother and her friend Joel “Brad” Rooke. Capistrant and Rooke returned to the Capistrant family home in the 1300 block of Garden Avenue in Roseville.

Shortly after midnight, Capistrant got a telephone call. She had a short conversation with the caller and then left the house around 1 a.m. Rooke told police he also left the house at that time.

About six hours later, an 11-year-old girl walking to school happened upon Capistrant’s nude body in an alley behind Jerry’s Foods and Capistrant’s workplace, One-Hour Martinizing, along County Road B just west of Dale Street. Capistrant had worked at the dry cleaner for about two weeks.

Investigators had little information to work with in the initial hours and days after the killing. No clothing or other belongings were with Capistrant’s body.

A few days later, investigators thought they got a big lead in the case, only to become disappointed. Police had seized the contents of her purse — they didn’t say how — but learned it had been stolen several days before her death while she was at HarMar Mall in Roseville. A 32-year-old St. Paul woman confessed to taking the purse and she was later charged with misdemeanor theft.

Police were never able to determine who called Capistrant.

‘We want to solve Capistrant’s murder’

The slaying has mostly stayed out of the public eye since the initial media reports. That changed, though, when the case wound up on social media. A Facebook page — “Who Killed Susan Capistrant?” — that went up in October 2020 put a new type of spotlight on the case. It has more than 600 members.

“I have been in contact with the Facebook group organizers providing as much information as I can,” Martin said Friday. “We want to solve Capistrant’s murder and give her family and the community closure.”

Visitors to the page have had lots of questions for Martin, who in a 15-minute video he posted to the page in October 2021 answered most of them. He acknowledged that he could not answer some because the case is open and active.

Questions he answered included:

Did Rooke take a lie-detector test? Rooke took two shortly after her killing and passed them both, Martin said. Rooke died in 2014.

Is there any way to track the telephone call? “I don’t have records from back then. To my knowledge, there is nothing in the case file regarding those call records,” Martin said, adding there is an “outside chance” of getting the information.

Was Capistrant sexually assaulted? “No. Intercourse, yes,” Martin said. “I don’t see anything in regards to the case that indicates that Sue was sexually assaulted, but I don’t know that at that time the exams were done as thoroughly as they are now.”

Have rape test kits been tested with modern DNA techniques? “Absolutely,” Martin said. However, it isn’t a complete DNA profile, so it cannot be uploaded to ancestry.com to see who the alleged killer might be related to and narrow it down that way, he said. “I have regular conversations with the scientists at the (Minnesota) Bureau of Criminal Apprehension; the technology isn’t there yet,” he said. “It might be there one day.”

Cori Prescott, who created the Facebook page and is its administrator, said Friday she had never heard of Osborne before Roseville police released the name.

“It throws me for a loop, because I honestly thought I was going to recognize the person,” she said.

Like Capistrant, Prescott went to Alexander Ramsey High School in Roseville. She was four years younger than Capistrant but hung out with a few people in her crowd, including her brother.

Prescott praised Martin for his work on the case.

“He’s been working really hard, and getting people talking and rattling some cages,” she said. “He’s really gotten far in it.”

Martin said Friday that cases like these are often solved by information “that someone deems too small or inconsequential to provide.” He urged the public to call Roseville police at 651-792-7008 or email rvpoliceinvest@cityofroseville.com to provide any information.