Dorothy Donovan

Dorothy May Donovan was found murdered inside her farmhouse in the early morning hours of June 22, 1991.

Details
Delaware State Police received a call from a pay phone in the early morning hours of June 22, 1991.

The caller identified himself as Charles Holden, who told police he'd seen a stranger lurking around the property where he and his mother lived.

He said he was concerned about his mother, who lived in the farmhouse on the property.

Police went out to take a look and discovered that the farmhouse had been broken into.

Someone had busted out the windows of the front door and reached in to unlock it.

Inside, they found the body of Holden's mother Dorothy in her bed. She had been stabbed repeatedly.

A Strange Story
All police had to go on so far was the phone call in which Charles told them about the stranger.

Charles was brought in for questioning, and that was when he revealed something that shocked police.

He told them that he knew the man he had seen stalking around the property. He recognized the man as a hitchhiker he had picked up late the night before.

Charles said that after leaving a late shift at his factory job, he had stopped at a local fast food joint in Harrington just after 11 pm for a late dinner.

He went inside and got his food. Outside in the parking lot he was approached by a man insisting to him that he needed a ride to Georgetown. That it was a family emergency.

Charles offered to take him part of the way since he was going in the direction of Georgetown on the way home.

Charles stopped at an intersection about half a mile from his house and told the hitchhiker that he couldn't drive him any further than that.

The hitchhiker became angry and tried to attack him, so Charles jumped from the front seat of his truck and tried to run for help.

The hitchhiker grabbed a screwdriver from the floorboard of the truck and gave chase.

After the stranger caught up with him, Charles eventually gave up and said he would take the man to Georgetown.

Charles managed to get back to his truck first, so he floored the gas and took off, leaving the hitchhiker standing in the road.

Charles told police he drove around for about twenty minutes after that, heading back in the direction of town because he didn't want the stranger to know where he lived.

Charles later returned home after midnight and saw the same hitchhiker on his property, investigating the mobile home he lived in, which was next to his mother's farmhouse.

That was when Charles had driven to the pay phone to call police.

Interviewers didn't believe the story that Charles told. They pointed out to Charles how unbelievable it was to think that the stranger had by some chance managed to find the property where he lived after walking from half a mile away.

Charles kept insisting that his story was true, and evidence from the crime scene would soon cause police to change their mind. Investigators found two pieces of blood evidence inside the farmhouse. One piece of evidence was a bloody fingerprint on the railing of the stairs going up to the second floor. The other blood evidence was a stain on the light switch at the foot of the stairs.

The finger print was compared with Charles Holden's and was not a match, forcing the police to consider that the bizarre story they had heard might actually be true.

Charles provided a description of the stranger he had picked up, and a composite drawing was made.

Unfortunately, the blood evidence was a dead end at the time of the murder in 1991.

Gilbert Cannon
In 2005, Delaware State Police decided to revisit the Dorothy Donovan murder.

By that time they had access to CODIS, an online database of thousands of convicted criminals with DNA evidence on file.

The police had taken a sample of the blood on the light switch in Dorothy's home back in 1991. They entered the sample into the database and got an exact hit.

The DNA belonged to Gilbert Cannon, a black male who then resided in Maryland, but had lived in Delaware in 1991.

Cannon had served time on drug and robbery charges in 1997, and had since been released.

The DNA on file was positively matched with the sample from the Donovan farmhouse, leaving absolutely no doubt it was Cannon's blood.

Police found Cannon and brought him in for questioning. Cannon cleared Dorothy's son Charles Holden of any lingering suspicion in the minds of police whenever he admitted they had never met one another prior to that night in 1991.

Police had previously wondered if it was possible that Charles had somehow hired Cannon to kill his mother, since the likelihood of Holden's story being entirely true still seemed unbelievable.

Cannon admitted to the murder whenever he was confronted with the DNA evidence, saying he had been high on drugs that night and hadn't meant to do it.

He told police that when Charles left him standing at the intercession, he walked down the road until he found the first house with no lights on. He had been looking for somewhere to spend the night.

Cannon had broken in and found out that Dorothy Donovan lived there, so he killed her with the screwdriver he'd taken from the floorboard of Charles Holden's truck, fearing that she'd be able to identify him.

Police surmised that Cannon must have sliced open his hand when he busted in the windows on the front door, and that was how he left the blood evidence.

The fingerprint was also positively identified as his.

Without CODIS and the blood evidence, Delaware State Police say they doubt this crime would ever have been solved.