After 41 years, the family of 16-year-old Kimberly Louiselle finally knows who k*illed her in Livingston County.
Kimberly Louiselle loved poetry and loved spending time with her sisters. She was on her way home on March 20, 1982, when she went missing. It would be more than three weeks before her body was found near the Island Lake Recreation Area in Livingston County.
Police said that Charles David Shaw’s DNA is linked to the case of Kimberly Louiselle. Shaw passed away in 1983. He had been named as the person who ki*lled Christina Lynn Castiglione, who was 19 years old. Police said he is also suspected of a third mur*der. If proven guilty, this would make him a serial ki*ller.
What happened to Kimberly Louiselle?
We still don’t know everything that happened in the last few weeks of her life.
We do know that Kimberly Louiselle left her boyfriend’s house on March 20, 1982, and called her mom from a payphone at a petrol station to let her know she was on her way home.
She chose to hitchhike because she had done it before. The place where she began was near 8 Mile and Inkster roads. She got a ride to Livonia, near 8 Mile and Merriman roads. By 6:30 p.m., she had already called at least four times to try to get a ride home.
She never got home, and no one ever saw her alive again.
Her family looked for her and talked to her friends, but they couldn’t find her. The Green Oak Township Police Department was told the next day that she was missing.
The mother of Kimberly Louiselle said that the police kept asking her about her daughter running away. Joan Louiselle said, “She wasn’t running away; she was on her way home; she said she was on her way home.”
Weeks came and went. After that, her body was found.
Her body was found behind a park and ride in the Island Lake Recreation Area on April 14, 1982. It was only five miles from her home on Grand River Avenue and Kensington Road.
She had been raped, hit, and strangled, and she was found naked. Her personal items could not be found. She hadn’t been seen in more than three weeks, but an autopsy showed she had only been dead for four or five days.
Renewed interest in the case
Cindy Arthurs, Kimberly Louiselle’s sister, worked hard to find the person who ki*lled her sister.
About 15 years ago, Cindy Arthurs searched for her name on Google to see if she could find anything. What she found were two very old articles that didn’t have the right information. “It made me mad that I couldn’t find any information about it.” She seemed like she didn’t exist. That’s where I began because I wanted to fix the wrong information, and things just kept going from there.
Cindy Arthurs shared information about the case on Facebook, put up flyers, and went looking for her sister’s friends. In other words, she pretended to be a detective.
Students from Michigan State University who were doing a cold case internship with the Michigan State Police became interested in the case. There was a name that stood out to the students as they went through the boxes of evidence and files. David Charles Shaw.
In 1983, someone told the police that Shaw had lived in the same area as Kimberly Louiselle. They said he had recently damaged their flat, which made them suspicious. The police wrote it down, but they never found Shaw.
Genetic DNA links Shaw to 1983 mu*rder
Early this year, Livingston County cold case investigators named Shaw as a possible suspect in the death of Christina Castiglione, 19, in 1983.
It was 19 years old when Castiglione went missing. She lived in Redford Township with her mother and father. She had been last seen walking west on 5 Mile Road near Lola Park in Redford Township between 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on March 19, 1983.
Her mother told the police that she was missing on March 21, 1983. It was discovered on March 29, 1983, in the Oak Grove State Game Area on Faussett Road in Deerfield Township. DNA could be taken from Castiglione’s body by the police.
In March 2022, investigators applied for and received a grant from Season of Justice, a non-profit group that funds DNA testing on unsolved mu*rder cases. The DNA evidence was sent to Othram Lab in Texas in May of last year. Othram Lab is the company that made DNA Solves.
The genealogical profile helped Othram find clues in the case, which he then gave to the police. They worked hard and got help from the suspect’s family, which investigators said helped them “identify beyond a reasonable doubt” who the k*iller was.
“Charles Shaw was identified as the person responsible for the murder of Christina Castiglione because the Shaw family cooperated with the investigation,” Livingston County investigators said in a press release.
Investigators focus on Shaw as suspect in Louiselle’s mur*der
Shaw was identified as a possible suspect in the mur*der of Kimberly Louiselle.
The places where he was known to hang out, like where he lived and worked, were plotted on maps, and they found that Kimberly Louiselle was close to those places.
Investigators checked out all the property and evidence they had in the case. They, along with the detectives, took the evidence to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab and asked that it be tested again.
A miracle was what they were hoping for. After four months, they finally got lucky and found one sperm cell. The DNA had been part of the evidence for forty years, but no one had seen it. Shaw was linked to the cell after it was put into the system.
Investigators think Shaw took Kimberly Louiselle while she was out walking. The police said they are sure that Charles David Shaw kil*led Kimberly Louiselle with his hands tied.
