VAN WERT, OH (WLIO) – A forty-year-old murder case is being revisited with modern DNA testing technology. A Van Wert County judge has granted John Spirko the opportunity to have evidence in the Betty Jane Mottinger murder case tested by a Virginia laboratory.
Spirko has been in prison since 1984 after being convicted of Mottinger’s stabbing death. Spirko is paying for the testing that will happen in July. Items to be tested include duct tape from the crime scene, a hunting knife that was found, and items found around Mottinger’s body. In August of 1982, she was working at the Elgin Post Office when it was robbed and killed.
A jury found Spirko guilty of murder and kidnapping and sentenced him to death. However, in 2008, then-Governor Ted Strickland reduced his sentence to life in prison. The lab will determine whether the sample is eroded too much for testing or if the sample is so small that it would be used up if tests were conducted.
