Man sentenced for Tyler County charges convicted for 1988 cold case murder

AUSTIN, Texas (KTRE) - A man who received a 199 year sentence for drug and weapons charges in Tyler County has been convicted for the murder of a woman in 1988.

According to a press release from DPS, on Sept. 20, Daniel Andrew MacGinnis entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to serve 20 years for the 1988 murder of Patricia Ann Howell Jacobs.

Back on Oct. 6, 1988, Jacobs’ body was found in the Neches River in Port Arthur, Texas. She was last seen the previous evening at the Silver Spur nightclub in Silsbee. A month later, her driver license and other personal items were located under a bridge near Kountze, Texas. Investigators identified MacGinnis as a suspect after two other incidents involving women but did not have enough evidence to charge him in Jacobs’ case.

Then, in 2018, Jacobs’ family reached out to the Texas Rangers Unsolved Crimes Investigation Program. The Rangers believed further investigation was needed and officially reopened the case in October 2018. Through the new investigation, clothing that had never been DNA-tested and other items were identified and the evidence was submitted to the Houston DPS Crime Lab for testing and retesting. The new DNA evidence was then entered into the Combined DNA Indexing System (CODIS), which identified a “hit” on MacGinnis.

After an interview and confirmation of the DNA evidence, he was arrested and eventually charged with Jacobs’ murder in Jefferson County

The press release said during the murder trial, MacGinnis entered a guilty plea and it was accepted.

RELATED: Tyler County man arrested for cold murder case gets life in prison for unrelated charges

Copyright 2022 KTRE. All rights reserved.