By Associated Press - Saturday, February 1, 2020

PAWTUCKET, R.I. (AP) - The Rhode Island attorney general has ruled that evidence discovered by the Pawtucket Police Department is not enough to prosecute a 1988 cold case.

The prosecutor’s office said the DNA of Joao Monterio and other evidence obtained by Pawtucket police does not “narrow the field of those culpable” enough to prosecute the defendant for the death of Christine Cole, the Providence Journal reported Friday.

Monteiro was charged in July with the murder of 10-year-old Cole. Monteiro’s lawyer says his client denies the charge.

Blood found on Cole’s pants was a partial match for DNA in the state database that belonged to a man born five years after her murder. Police concluded that the suspect would be a close relative of the closest match, who was Monteiro’s son.

Prosecutors found that while the DNA did not exclude Monteiro as a potential culprit, it did not exclude other paternal male relatives either.

“That means absent the ability to eliminate the defendant’s father, brothers, uncles, and cousins on his father’s side of the family as suspects, we cannot definitively establish that the defendant was the source of that inculpatory DNA sample,” assistant attorney general Timothy Healy wrote.

Monterio has been released on bail.

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