Police in Germany are asking some 900 men to provide DNA samples as part of an investigation into the 1996 murder of an 11-year-old girl, the Associated Press reports.
Claudia Ruf was kidnapped while walking her neighbor's dog in Grevenbroich in western Germany and her body was found two days later in a field in Euskirchen, 43 miles south, the AP adds. It notes she had been raped, strangled, and set ablaze. No one was charged in her death, according to the BBC.
Through this new initiative, the German police have invited men in the region who were between the age of 14 and 70 at the time of Ruf's death to undergo DNA analysis, the AP says. It adds that while the police doubt the murderer himself will provide a sample, they say a relative might come forward and lead them to a suspect. Police say that any samples that don't match will be destroyed after testing, the AP adds.
"After more than 23 years, there's a big possibility to solve the sad fate of my daughter," Claudia's father Friedhelm Ruf said in a video posted earlier this month, according to the AP. "The perpetrator has been able for too long to hide behind all of us."