The cell phone photograph of Slaughter investigators used to help identify him through facial recognition software. Credit: Berks County District Attorney’s Office
A senseless argument that led to the murder of a 34-year-old man in a Pennsylvania diner parking lot has now been solved thanks to facial recognition technology and DNA left on a Styrofoam cup at the crime scene 12 years earlier.
On March 24, 2012, Julio Torres and two other men got in a dispute in a parking lot diner in the wee hours of the morning. Eventually, Torres ended the argument and retreated to his car, but was shot and killed by one of the men before he could even move the car.
Video footage of the parking lot revealed a good amount of evidence to the police, including two suspects—one of which pulled the trigger. The footage also showed that both the shooter and the other suspect were holding Styrofoam cups just prior to the crime. Police collected these cups from the crime scene, including a piece that was bitten off from the shooter’s cup. The cup and the bitten off piece, as well as the second cup, were sent to the Pennsylvania State Police Forensic Crime Lab for DNA analysis. A male DNA profile was developed, but it did not match CODIS or any other state/local DNA database.
At this point, the police had already identified the accomplice as 22-year-old Jermaine Case, and the DNA on the second cup confirmed it. He was arrested and convicted at trial for conspiracy to commit aggravated assault. Case never gave up the shooter’s name, however, and with an unknown DNA profile, the trail eventually went cold.
In 2023, the case was re-opened as part of a Cold Case initiative launched by the Berks County District Attorney’s Office. Berks County (PA) detectives and the West Reading (PA) Police Department zeroed in on a photo of the alleged shooter taken by an associate at a party shortly before the crime. The photo was extracted from the associate’s cell phone in 2012 and included as evidence in the original file on the murder case.
Investigators were then able to utilize facial recognition software—not available over a decade ago—to assist in potentially identifying the suspect in the photo as Vallis Slaughter, originally from Brooklyn, NY.
In December 2023, investigators tracked Slaughter to a residence he was living in in Jersey City, NJ, with his mother. Berks County detectives and Jersey City authorities conducted surreptitious surveillance of Slaughter in the coming months, noting that he often went outside for a cigarette and discarded the butt on the ground.
On Feb. 9, 2024, investigators once again saw Slaughter on the sidewalk near his residence smoking a cigarette. He discarded the still-smoldering cigarette butt onto the sidewalk, and investigators hurried to collect it. The butt was then sent to the Pennsylvania State Police Forensic Crime Lab, who confirmed this month that DNA extracted from the filter of the butt matched DNA taken from the bitten-off piece of Styrofoam cup left at the crime scene 12 years earlier.
Slaughter, now 39, was arrested March 20 at his residence in Jersey City. The investigation has revealed no previous ties to Torres, or any other motive beyond the verbal dispute the night of the crime.