Schumake investigation to air on A&E Saturday

The 1981 murder of an SIUC student that was resolved earlier this year is featured Saturday, Oct. 7, on "Cold Case Files" on the A&E Network.

The program will present the investigation surrounding the Aug. 17, 1981, rape and murder of Susan Schumake. Advances in DNA technology allowed Carbondale police to take evidence gathered from a cigarette butt more than 20 years later and tie it to Daniel M. Woloson, who was living in Michigan.

The show is set to air at 8 p.m., Saturday, and again four hours later at midnight. The segment is scheduled to be the second of two cases profiled during the hour.

Woloson, now 47, was initially identified as a possible suspect by SIUC police officers Lt. Lowell McGee and the late detective Bob Hopkins. But Woloson, who was working as a handyman at an off-campus residence hall at the time of the murder, left town prior to a second interview with police.

At the time of her death, Schumake, a native of Chicago Heights, was studying radio and television. She was slain as she walked along a then-campus shortcut near U.S. Highway 51 south.

A Jackson County jury convicted Woloson of Schumake’s murder in March. He was sentenced in May to 40 years in prison — the maximum sentence allowed under sentencing guidelines in place in 1981.