A decades-old murder case from Baltimore County has finally seen a break, as police identified a suspect thanks to advancements in DNA technology. WMAR-2 News reported that Samuel Allen, age 59, was shot to death back on August 2, 1981, at his residence on Liberty Road, with his wife and daughter as witnesses; now, they're saying that newly analyzed DNA evidence has implicated 75-year-old Alan Bass, a man already behind bars in Delaware.
According to police, Bass, who is serving a life sentence, donned surgical gloves and a demeanor demanding money before fatally shooting Allen as the latter entered his own kitchen. This sequence of events terrorized the family and went unsolved for over four decades. Officers, after responding to the harrowing incident, secured a bag and shirt from the crime scene, and these items have proven crucial in the quest for answers, as detailed in a CBS News interview with Allen's daughter, who chillingly remembered her father's final expression of "just total anger."
In a story that spans from the grim past to the science-forward present, Baltimore County detectives, spurred by conversations in 2023 with the victim's daughter, sent the evidence for DNA analysis. In November 2024, a definitive profile emerged from DNA Laboratories International, pointing to Bass as a potential suspect, subsequently confirmed by further testing in January 2025 to be a match for the evidence recovered decades prior.
