By Seamus McGraw
October 9, 2006
CLARENCE, N.Y. (Crime Library) — Authorities say they have no evidence linking the slaying of a 45-year-old mother whose body was found last week, strangled and apparently beaten on a suburban bike path, with a string of violent rapes along bike paths and other areas more than a decade ago.
Prosecutors told the Buffalo News late last week that no foreign DNA was discovered on the body of Joan Diver, who vanished, apparently while jogging along a secluded path in the suburban Buffalo town of Newstead.
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| Joan Diver |
The lack of obvious DNA evidence suggests that Diver was not a victim of the elusive "bike path rapist," who attacked nine women, killing two, along bike paths, in parks and along railroad tracks in Amherst, Buffalo and Hamburg during the 1980s and 1990s. In each of those cases, the victims had been sexually assaulted, but Diver's autopsy showed no indication that the woman had been raped.
For the moment, authorities say they have few clues and no suspects, not even a person of interest, in Diver's slaying.
The mother of four vanished Sept. 29, apparently while in the midst of her routine jog. According to police, the woman had dropped her youngest child off at day care about 9 a.m., then parked her SUV near the path, left behind her wallet and other personal items, and headed off down the path.
Three hours later, when she failed to pick up her youngest child at day care, her husband, University of Buffalo professor Steven Diver, notified police.
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