For more than 30 years, the case had remained unsolved. While questions remain, the police said they had linked a 52-year-old Missouri man to DNA at the crime scene.
More than three decades after Carmen Van Huss was found dead in her Indianapolis apartment, a homicide victim at 19, the police said on Tuesday that they had arrested a suspect, a break in a cold case that had long consumed the Van Huss family.
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and the Boone County Sheriff’s Office in Missouri arrested Dana Shepherd, 52, in Columbia, Mo., on Friday in connection with Ms. Van Huss’s death. The authorities charged Mr. Shepherd with murder, felony murder and rape, according to Ryan Mears, the Marion County prosecutor.
“Thirty-one years ago she was tragically killed, and today we finally have some answers,” Kendale Adams, the deputy chief of the Indianapolis police criminal investigations division, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Jimmy Van Huss Jr., Ms. Van Huss’s younger brother, thanked law enforcement officials for their efforts to bring the case to a close.
“There’s a lot of people that missed Carmen all these years,” Mr. Van Huss said. “She had a lot of family, a lot of friends.”
Mr. Van Huss said he was a freshman in high school when his sister was killed. “We were becoming a lot closer as she was taken from us,” he said. “She wasn’t able to experience her college graduation or have a wedding or any life events that she missed out on.”
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
