D.C. cold case detectives are looking for the man who fatally stabbed a construction foreman in the late 1980s and left a trail of blood from the crime scene.
Authorities have obtained a partial DNA profile to match the suspect who killed 19-year-old James McCallum. The evidence is not enough to be entered into a national database, but it’s enough to get a match to the killer.
All police need is a name, said Detective Jim Trainum, of the Violent Crime Case Review Project. And they’re offering $25,000 to the person who can provide it.
“It’s very simple. For up to $25,000, you give me the name, we do the rest,” Trainum said.
The McCallum case has been one of the 40 unsolved slayings that will be placed on playing cards and distributed to inmates in the D.C. jail this month, Trainum said.
McCallum had two children and worked for his brother’s construction business. Police said that he also used drugs, and was going to buy cocaine with a friend the night of his slaying.
On Dec. 14, 1989, McCallum’s buddy dropped him off near a liquor store at 15th and Isherwood streets Northeast and circled the block, police said. When the friend pulled up to the store, he suddenly saw McCallum running away, followed by a man with a large knife.
McCallum was screaming that the man was trying to rob him.
The man with the knife chased McCallum over a fence and caught up to him at a community garden where he stuck the knife into McCallum’s chest, police said.
“The friend sees the bad guy stab him once, then take off running,” Trainum said.
McCallum’s friend dragged the bleeding 36-year-old into the back seat of his car to take him to a hospital, but McCallum died on the way, police said.
The killer was never found, but authorities said he left a trail of blood from the stabbing to an apartment building in the 400 block of 18th Street Northeast. The swab of blood was kept in an evidence locker until science caught up. Now, police are just waiting for a name.
