Murder of Dawn Magyar

Wingeart's appeal of his conviction was rejected in 2003 by the Michigan Appeals Court, which affirmed the verdict. In May 2004 the Michigan Supreme Court denied his appeal of that ruling.

After a long investigation, new technology in DNA analysis enabled Shiawassee County, Michigan police to charge Jerald Leroy Wingeart in 2001, who was identified by DNA collected at the murder scene. In November 2001 he was tried and convicted in the case, and sentenced to life in prison. The case was closed more than 28 years after Magyar's body was found.

On March 7, 2001, Wingeart, aged sixty, was arrested and charged with Magyar's murder. He could not be charged for kidnapping or rape because of the statute of limitations on those crimes, 10 and 6 years, respectively.

He was tried in November of that year at the Livingston County Courthouse. He claimed in his defense that he had had consensual sex with Magyar. But experts testified that Wingeart's DNA was left on Magyar during the brief timeframe that she went missing and was killed. On November 27, 2001, Wingeart was found guilty of first-degree felony and premeditated murder. In 2002 he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

In 1998, police located the gun's owner, Robert Shaw. He told authorities that he had owned the gun which they found, but that it had been lost many years before. He was cleared in the case by DNA testing. A few years later, Shaw told police that he remembered that, soon after they divorced, his ex-wife had dated a man named Jerald Leroy Wingeart. He said that Wingeart may have taken his gun at the time.

In 1995, the state police decided to reactivate the case. A detective sergeant reviewing cold cases realized that advances in DNA analysis (which had not been available as a forensic tool when the earlier investigation was conducted) might yield evidence to identify Magyar's killer, as the county police had collected sperm specimens from Magyar's body at the time of the crime. The Michigan State Police DNA Laboratory in East Lansing arranged for forensic DNA testing on this material to develop profiles of Magyar and her potential rapist and killer. They also arranged for testing by an independent laboratory. They renewed their search for the known men in Magyar's life.

Magyar's mother Eleanor and brother Larry Swan and his wife were alive to see justice served for Dawn. The father Ralph Swan had died in 1988.

In 1981 Wingeart had been arrested on charges related to McVeigh's death. He was living in Niles, Michigan, where he grew up, and had moved at least twice in the previous two years. The case was dismissed before trial in 1982 by the Wexford County, Michigan judge, who ruled that the police had violated Wingeart's rights in the course of a search for evidence. At the time of McVeigh's murder, Wingeart was 38 and living in Eaton Rapids; he worked for the state government. He was known to have left the area after McVeigh disappeared and before her body was found, a month after her death; he moved to New York. Within two years, he had returned to Michigan. In 2004 police said they expected to make use of advances in DNA analysis and other forensic technology in their investigation.

At the time of his conviction, Wingeart was under investigation for deaths of young women and other crimes committed in Washtenaw and Ionia counties in the previous ten years. The Argus-Press reported in May 2004 that the Michigan Attorney General's office announced that it was reviewing the cold case of the April 7, 1979 rape and murder of 16-year-old Laura Mae McVeigh near Hubbardston, Michigan, in Ionia County, with the potential for bringing charges against Wingeart. Because he had never reached trial in the murder of McVeigh, double jeopardy prohibitions would not apply. The prosecutors were working with Michigan State Police and investigators from Ionia County.

In June 1974, a .22 caliber revolver, believed to be the murder weapon, was recovered from the Shiawassee River in Owosso. The revolver was rusted and unable to fire, but still loaded. It contained three spent rounds that matched the brand of bullets that killed Magyar. The gun was traced to a pawn shop in Yuma, Arizona, where a man named Robert Shaw had purchased it in 1965. In 1976 Magyar's wallet and identification were found on the bank of the Shiawassee River, in the same area where the .22 gun had been found.

Magyar was believed to have been abducted on January 27, 1973 after grocery shopping in Owosso, Michigan in Shiawassee County. She was last seen by a friend who briefly talked with her in the supermarket checkout line and saw her leave the store with her purchases.

Police learned that Wingeart at age 20, then a married University of Michigan (U-M) engineering student with a scholarship, had been convicted in 1961 for the rape of a blind female U-M student and armed robbery of her escort in Ann Arbor Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan. He served an eight-year prison sentence and was released in 1969. He later worked as a long-haul trucker and lived in more than one state.

Dawn Lee Swan Magyar (March 28, 1952 – January 27, 1973) was found murdered in March 1973, in a wooded area in Chapin, Michigan. She had been reported missing since January 27, 1973 from her home in Chesaning, Michigan. Believed to have been abducted from a shopping center in nearby Owosso, she was found to have been raped, and shot three times.

Magyar was born Dawn Lee Swan on March 28, 1952 in Corunna, Michigan, to parents Eleanor and Ralph Swan. She had brothers Max and Larry. The siblings grew up there and attended local schools; Swan graduated from the high school in 1970.