2014 Update: DNA profile
Investigators have promising lead in 1999 BR homicide
Ben Wallace
Aug. 23, 2014; 10:11 p.m.
[...]
Testing something collected from the scene,
police now have an unidentified DNA profile.
We consider the lead to be very significant, and were following up on several different avenues for locating the donor, Detective John Dauthier, the departments only employee assigned full-time to cold case homicides, said in an interview. Dauthier declined to expand on the find. Detectives routinely keep some specific details hidden from the public that only people directly involved with a crime can confirm to them, at least partially to avoid arresting people on false confessions.
[...]
Usually in a case like this, usually there can be a close relative, or an ill-gotten friend, or a robbery something that will remotely justify what you see before you in your mind, and you start working on that angle, said Ron Cowart, a retired Baton Rouge police officer who was one of several homicide detectives originally assigned to the case. None of that manifested itself, he said.
Federer, who was found fully clothed, was not sexually assaulted prior to being killed. Detectives, in fact, did not find any signs of a physical struggle. However, her body was found with a portable telephone nearby. And the only notable missing item from her apartment was her backpack.
She was running for her life, Cowart said, describing what detectives believe happened just before she was shot, based on evidence collected at her apartment. And she sought the sanctity of her apartment to get away from whoever was coming for her.
The attack occurred as Federer was arriving home from school. Detectives found a trash bag sitting by the door. Federers dog, a cocker spaniel named Freckles, was still inside Federers bedroom when an apartment manager found the students body roughly an hour after the shooting. Lights were still on inside the apartment, said Logan Collins, a BRPD homicide detective who has worked with Dauthier on the cold case.
It does appear that she had time to grab a phone in an attempt to call 911, Collins said.
Drawers werent pulled out. Rooms werent ransacked. No one heard a scream.
But gunshots were heard.
much more at the link