HOUGHTON AND PORT WASHINGTON, Mich. (WLUC) – After 65 years, 7-year-old Chester Alfred Breiney can now rest in peace.

Breiney was buried in the parish cemetery of St. Mary’s in Port Washington, Wis., on Friday afternoon. His 1959 murder case was reopened last October and the settlement of the case was announced last week.

A news conference was held just before the funeral in Ozaukee County to close the case.

“Because of your tireless efforts to bring closure to this case and give a voice to this young victim is why we stand here today and put a name to this boy’s face,” said Ozaukee County Sheriff Christy Knowles.

Chester, given the adopted name Markku Jutila, was raised in Houghton County by his adoptive parents William and Hilja. According to officials, he was abused and neglected by his parents. In 1959, during a move from Houghton County to Chicago, he was beaten to death by his mother and left in a sewer.

Both adoptive parents were arrested in 1966 and extradited to the county in Houghton County. Despite Hilja’s confession and the discovery of human remains, the charges were dismissed.

This was because there was insufficient evidence that they had committed the crime and the prosecution did not connect the child skeleton found at Mequon to the defendants. However, investigative DNA and genealogy ultimately solved the case.

“Because of this new technology, we’ve been exploring new ways to solve some of these old crimes,” said Wisconsin Department of Justice Special Agent Neil McGrath. “And so it came up, doing an inventory of all the unidentified remains we had, and this one just happened to have a crime lab number that we could track.”

That pursuit included reaching out to the Michigan Tech University archives in January. Investigators requested Houghton County Circuit Court records for the Jutilas during their trial.

“We also then went into our local newspapers, which are all historically on microfilm,” said MTU library assistant Kim McMullan. We went through these and were able to find various articles that related to the case as it happened.”

The Houghton County Sheriff’s Office says it has not been contacted to assist during this investigation. The office was central to the initial investigation and worked with several police departments at the time. However, the office says it is glad the case is now resolved.

“We’re glad to see that the case was solved using DNA and genealogy testing,” said Houghton County Sheriff’s Detective Lt. Charlie Klein. “And we are happy that the victim can now rest in peace.”

Because adoptive parents William and Hilja Jutila died in 1988, there will be no prosecution for Chester’s death.

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