Tennessee authorities positively have identified the remains of a 1997 slaying victim whose body was found in a burned car in Grundy County.
Andrew Joseph Bluitt, 32, was identified this week after his picture was put on a state website and triggered a telephone call from his sister, said Kristen Helm, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman.
Bluitt originally was misidentified by then-state medical examiner Dr. Charles Harlan as the victim's killer, Helm said.
The real killer, Bruce Alan Littleton, of Smyrna, Tenn., was awaiting sentencing in federal court for cocaine trafficking in 1997 when he picked up two hitchhikers, Joel McElroy and Bluitt, Helm said.
Littleton strangled Bluitt under the Tennessee River Bridge in Humphreys County and kept the body in the back seat of his car for two days, she said. Then Littleton drove to Grundy County and staged a car crash. He put Bluitt's body in the front seat, doused him in gasoline and set the car on fire, she said.
Bluitt's body was misidentified and buried, but the TBI exhumed the body in 1999 and sent the remains to the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center in Knoxville, Helm said.
Littleton was indicted on murder charges in 2000 and pleaded guilty in October 2001 to second-degree murder, Helm said. McElroy also pleaded to charges related to his role in the crime.
Littleton was sent to federal prison to serve his drug sentence and now is serving a 20-year sentence in state prison. McElroy is on supervised parole, she said.
TBI personnel posted a sketch of Bluitt online in July. When his sister called, police were able to match the sketch with a mug shot from the Maricopa County Jail in Arizona, Helm said.
A California laboratory had a DNA profile of one of Bluitt's teeth, and the TBI was able to confirm the match, she said.