BEL AIR, Md. — Work is now underway to add cameras and upgraded security to the Ma & Pa Trail where Rachel Morin disappeared on August 5 of last year.
Searchers would discover her body the following day.
A gift from the creators of a national crime podcast has now raised the reward to $35,000 for information leading to her killer—-the man featured in this video after he committed a sexual assault during a home invasion in Los Angeles in March of last year.
“It’s a big world, but I believe that someone along the way, here or there, and our detectives have been out there, we’ve done canvases out there, we’ve done canvases here with the family as recently as just before Christmas with the family here in Bel Air, I believe that someone has seen that video and probably has a suspicion of who that is and they need to call us,” said Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler.
DNA from that crime 2600 miles away ties the same man to both crimes, but little else is known about the man who is only seen in profile for a brief moment on the security footage.
“Everyone is assuming he came here. He could live here and have been out there in March so we don’t know,” said Gahler, “Until we have somebody look at that video, identify him or we get successful on some of the other investigative efforts and identify him, we won’t have those answers.”
After a six-month-long investigation with no arrests to date, we asked the sheriff if he feared that the killer could strike again before he’s ever caught.
“Every day. I think about that every day. The detectives think about that. We talk about it in our staff meetings,” said Gahler, “My fear is we’re going to catch him one way or another. Someone’s going to come up with a tip. One of the either scientific or technology leads are going to pan out, which they have not so far to date or he’s going to commit this sort of violent crime again and hopefully, leave more evidence behind and be apprehended. We certainly don’t want to see that be the way that he’s brought into custody.”
