NJ Man Charged In PA Cold Case Killing After DNA Match, Police Say

NEW JERSEY - A New Jersey man was charged this week in the killing of a 34-year-old in a Pennsylvania diner parking lot over a decade ago.

Vallis L. Slaughter, 39, of Jersey City, was charged with murder, assault and conspiracy charges in connection with the shooting death of Julio A. Torress on March 24, 2012, who was found fatally shot inside his car about 3:30 a.m. in the West Reading Diner parking lot, the Berks County District Attorney’s Office said. DNA evidence on Styrofoam cups and cigarettes and facial recognition technology helped authorities link the New Jersey man to the killing, police added.

Though Jermaine Case, then 22, was charged in connection with the incident in 2012, “the person responsible for pulling the trigger and shooting Julio Torress was never identified,” Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams said at a Monday press conference. “To date, we have never determined what the motive was for this shooting, other than some senseless dispute.”

Just before the shooting, Case and an unknown shooter began a verbal disagreement with Torress, which then escalated, Adams said.

Case was found guilty the following year of aggravated and simple assault, but he was not found guilty of other charges including murder.

State police were able to link Styrofoam cups at the scene to Case and the unknown shooter, though there were no DNA matches in the state system at the time for the man behind the trigger.

It was only during a relaunch of the case as part of a 2023 cold case initiative that investigators used facial recognition software to match a 2012 photograph of the alleged shooter taken at a party before the shooting to Slaughter, police said.

Last month, detectives were able to use a tossed cigarette Slaughter was seen smoking moments before near his mother’s house to compare Slaughter’s DNA to the evidence at the crime scene over a decade ago.

Slaughter was arrested last Wednesday at about 6:15 a.m. at his mother’s home in Jersey City, police said. He is being held without bail at the Hudson County Correctional Facility pending extradition to Pennsylvania.

Slaughter is also a suspect in a Brooklyn killing, police said.

“This is one of those cases where we had DNA,” Adams said, “and we really did a great job — just having that DNA sample isn’t enough, but we were able to utilize technology to identity this individual. Then we have confirmed that identification with … DNA.”