Officers descended on the Buck Shoals Road home of Hazel Linder on July 1 where she and her daughter Gena Parker were slain. On Thursday, police said evidence was found that determined Patrick Tracy Burris had been in the home. (Ledger file photo) More than a week after alleged serial killer Patrick Tracy Burris was killed in a police shootout in Gaston County, local and state investigators continued to sift through evidence and hunt for clues about what brought Burris to Cherokee County and how he wound up targeting five local people.

Investigators said they had no doubt when they announced to the world late July 6 that Burris, 41, was the man responsible for five murders here. Now, police say scientific evidence places Burris at two of the three crime scenes.

The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office announced early Thursday evening that DNA and fingerprint evidence link Burris to the Battleground Road home of 63-year-old Kline Cash, who was killed June 27, and the Buck Shoals Road home of 83-year-old Hazel Linder, who was killed along with her daughter, 50-year-old Gena Parker, on July 1.

The sheriff's office said no additional comment would be made about the new evidence at this time.

Nearly three weeks after the killings began, many questions remain unanswered.

Following Burris' death and the publication of his photo and a more accurate physical description that painted him as a virtual mountain of a man, Gaffney Police Chief Rick Turner confirmed that numerous reports of Burris sightings started coming in to police.

Though several possible videotapes surfaced of Burris visiting local businesses, Turner confirmed that they were of insufficient quality to allow positive identification. However, Turner said police believe some witness sightings definitely were credible.

"We're looking at them (the sightings) to determine how long he was here (in Gaffney) and get into his mind a little bit about what he did prior to the incidents," Turner said.

At this point, the chief confirmed, the sightings align with the dates of the three shooting incidents that claimed five lives.

Burris' connection to Gaffney and Cherokee County, however, still is not clear.

Though one news outlet in North Carolina reported that Burris had told a former neighbor in Vale, N.C. he was originally from Gaffney, local investigators said they have not yet been able to confirm any definite links.

"That's one of the things we hope that (the ongoing investigations) may uncover," said Chief Deputy Joel Hill of the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office.

Unfortunately, Hill said, "All the answers that most people want to know, only he (Burris) can answer."

Burris had a criminal record covering several states and spent the better part of the past two decades bouncing around the North Carolina prison system, but had no criminal record in South Carolina, according to a check of SLED records.

Only hours prior to the announcement late Thursday about the fingerprint and DNA evidence, investigators said they still were waiting for results on a mountain of evidence sent to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Laboratory for testing.

A single fingerprint can take hours and even days to process, Turner said. And while he didn't know exactly how much evidence was collected from the Tyler Home Center on East Frederick Street where Stephen Tyler, 48, and his daughter Abby, 15, were shot on July 2, Turner noted that the crime scene was a business that had customers coming in and out, touching various merchandise, every business day.

Investigations aren't just limited to Cherokee County, however. They also are ongoing in Cleveland County and Gaston County, N.C., as well as Spartanburg County.

Shortly after Burris was killed, information came to light that Burris had sold several long guns in Cleveland County about two weeks before the Cherokee County killings began. Those long guns were turned into police and ultimately were turned over to the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office, which sought to determine if any of the guns had been stolen locally.

"We had been informed that investigators in Cleveland County (N.C.) had recovered some weapons that were similar in description to weapons that had been reported stolen in Spartanburg County," said Tony Ivey, public information officer for the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office.

A check of crime database records, however, showed none of the guns had been reported stolen, Ivey said. That's not always unusual, though.

"Sometimes individuals have a weapon stolen but they cannot provide law enforcement with a serial number, make, model, etc. on the weapon so we have no data to enter into the NCIC database," Ivey said.

That has forced Spartanburg investigators to go through U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms records to track down the original owners of the weapons, which is a time-consuming task. Weapons can be sold, or traded after their initial purchase.

As of Thursday, Ivey could not say if any of the weapons had been reported stolen.

Turner said the recovered weapons have no apparent links to any burglaries, thefts or other crimes in the City of Gaffney, and Hill said there were no confirmed links at this point to any similar crimes in Cherokee County.

Though police have no doubt that Burris was the man responsible for the murders, the investigation is ongoing for many reasons, among them a desire to get answers for the victims' families.

"We've still got to do all the things we're doing," Hill added, "even though he was killed. We still have to put a case together and in order and make sure everything has been covered."

Turner added that many in law enforcement also hope to learn from the incident.

"What led to it? Were there any indicators? What would have led us or someone else to know he was building to this?" Turner asked, adding, "If he (Burris) was giving off certain indicators, maybe we can see them in someone else."

North Carolina prison and parole officials, who have been taking heat over Burris' release from jail in the first place, have consistently said Burris did not have a history or show signs of assaultive and violent behavior.

The shootings occurred in Cherokee County on June 27, July 1 and July 2. Four victims died at the scenes of the crimes and the fifth died at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center on July 4.

Burris had been released from the North Carolina prison system on April 29 after about seven years and nine months of imprisonment for a string of property crimes and was serving nine months of supervised release at the time of the killings.

In the weeks before the shootings, Burris was arrested for driving without a license and had missed curfew five times, prompting his supervising parole officer on June 4 to start the process of putting Burris back in jail.

On June 12, the parole officer personally had Burris arrested after seeing him driving without a license. Later that same day, at about 4 p.m., the parole officer obtained the official arrest warrant for the supervised release violations, but did not serve it on Burris before he was released from jail once again.

Burris was not seen again until July 6 when Gaston County Police Department officers found him inside a Dallas- Spencer Mountain Road home while investigating a reported break-in. Police attempted to take him into custody on the outstanding arrest warrant after learning his true identity. Burris pulled a gun and fired at the officers, striking one in the leg.

The officers returned fire, killing Burris.

The gun Burris possessed was the same gun used in all five Cherokee County murders, the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, SLED and the Gaffney Police Department confirmed hours later.

A spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Justice said Thursday a state Bureau of Investigation probe of the officerinvolved shooting of Burris still was ongoing.