A more than 40 year Livingston County cold case murder has reportedly been solved, with the killer identified as the same man responsible for another cold case murder resolved earlier this year.
Cindy Arthurs, the sister of Kimberly Louiselle (pictured above), posted to social media Friday that her sister’s murder had been solved with “100% positivity” and said the killer was Charles David Shaw, the “Same SOB who killed Christine Castiglione.”
Shaw was identified in February through DNA analysis as the killer of 19-year-old Christina Castiglione of Redford Township, whose body was found March 29th, 1983, in the Oak Grove State Game Area on Faussett Rd. in Deerfield Township. Police said she had been strangled and sexually assaulted.
Louiselle was just 16 when her body was found on April 14, 1982, in a wooded area at the Island State Recreation Area in Green Oak Township. Police said she had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled. Louiselle had last been seen hitchhiking March 20, 1982, near Eight Mile and Merriman roads, near Livonia.
In making the announcement, Arthurs posted “Kim, I love you, I miss you and I never let you be forgotten. I kept my promise. IT’S OVER!!!!!!!”
She also posted a picture of she and her parents and sister Cathy standing with Michigan State Police Cold Case Detective Sgt. Larry Rothman. Her father is holding a picture of Kimberly.
A request for confirmation has been sent to Michigan State Police, but has yet to be answered.
In Castiglione’s case, although male DNA was collected from the autopsy, the technology for identification was unavailable to police at the time. However, it was preserved and entered into CODIS by the Michigan State Police Crime Lab in the early 2000’s, but a suspect was never identified.
In March of 2022, however, the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office received grant funding through Season of Justice to conduct advanced DNA testing on the suspect DNA samples taken in 1983.
Season of Justice is a non-profit organization dedicated to funding DNA testing on unsolved cold case homicides. They provide funding to law enforcement agencies nationwide to conduct advanced testing in homicide, sexual assault, and Jane/John Doe cases where the victim’s body or the suspect is unidentified, and DNA is the only investigative option.
Forensic DNA evidence gathered from advanced testing was then sent to a private forensic laboratory in Texas who used Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing to develop a comprehensive genealogical profile from the DNA of a male suspect.
The Livingston County Cold Case Team then used that to identify Charles David Shaw, who died in November of 1983, as Castiglione’s killer, which was confirmed by three separate familial DNA comparison tests.
Shaw, a long-time Livonia resident who lived less than five miles from where Castiglione went missing, was described by family members as a sex addict who struggled with mental illness and his gender identity. Authorities said his ex-wife, who cooperated with investigators, told them Shaw wanted to obtain a sex change operation. In addition, his official cause of death was autoerotic asphyxiation.
Shaw had several interactions with law enforcement beginning at a young age. One such interaction resulted in his arrest in 1981 for the attempted abduction of a woman in the Fowlerville McDonald’s parking lot.
To that point, Criminologist and Professor, David Hayes, who teaches at Cleary University and Jackson College, tells GIGO News that while DNA links Shaw to the Castiglione murder and apparently Louiselle’s as well, his past actions also help fill in the blanks.
“After speaking to people close to Shaw after the Castiglione case broke, it is interesting to note that they had suspicions, especially after the 1981 arrest for the attempted abduction,” said Hayes. “There was a very strong indication that Shaw’s violence and anger with women was manifesting in dangerous ways and, without going into details, those ways are indicative of a person that may consider homicide as a viable outlet. The connection to Kim Louiselle is not surprising, and it would be equally unsurprising if there were more names added to that list, as sad as it may be. Conversely, this shouldn’t be taken as a bellwether moment and used as means of painting Shaw as the local boogeyman wherein we attribute all manner of unsolved awfulness to him. Is it possible? Of course. Is it guaranteed? No. Not at all.”
Hayes also says it would be a mistake to assume Shaw’s gender identity issues were a primary factor in his involvement in the murder.
“I’m reluctant to comment on it only because the gender dysmorphia issues were reported from family members,” he said following the Castiglione announcement in February. “I haven’t seen any of the interviews. I haven’t seen any of the terminology they’ve used. So I’m loathe to make an assumption about his gender identity issues, if any. I would say that sometimes this plays into homicidal behavior, but I could see in the early 80s, having gender identity issues and having to live with that in the society at the time and in the climate at the time would’ve been a very big stressor, especially in the Livonia-Redford area, being familiar with that in the early 80s as well. So there’s a lot of factors that could have played into it.”
