RACINE, Wis. – Wisconsin authorities have arrested a 36-year-old Illinois man whose fingerprints match those on a bag used to suffocate a teenage runaway 17 years ago.
Racine County Sheriff Chris Schmaling says James P. Eaton of Palatine, Ill., was arrested Saturday in Chicago.
Eaton is being held in Racine on $1 million bail on tentative charges of first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse, in the 1997 killing of Amber Creek. Formal charges haven't been filed.
Schmaling didn't know whether Eaton has an attorney.
The body of 14-year-old Amber, from Palatine, Ill., was found in a Racine County marsh. She'd been beaten, sexually assaulted and suffocated with a plastic bag
Schmaling said Tuesday that DNA recovered from Amber's body matched DNA from a cigarette Eaton had discarded at a Chicago-area train station.
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