Florida cold case detectives cracked open a 21-year-old murder case with the help of a tipster.
Thelma Storrs was 35 when she went missing in 1998. Two weeks later, she was found dead in a field in Lee County.
The case went unsolved but was reviewed after a tipster recently sent information to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office about the identity of a possible suspect, the office said in a press release. The office’s Major Crimes Unit conducted a thorough investigation and developed probable cause to arrest Luis Nieves, 52, and charge him with homicide.
The sheriff’s office did not reveal what the tipster said or what evidence led to the arrest.
“My heart goes out to the family of Thelma Storrs as they continue to grieve the loss of their loved one. My hope is that they find some peace in this arrest and know we never gave up on finding justice for her and her family,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said in a statement.
“I am so proud of our deputies and the detectives in our Cold Case and Major Crimes Units who worked extensively for more than 20 years to bring closure to this case. This arrest also serves as a reminder that it is never too late to come forward with information. Coldblooded killers will not walk free in Lee County.”
According to WINK, the tipster told police that Nieves admitted to killing Storrs.
Nieves appeared in court on April 6 to face a judge and remained in jail on $750,000 bond.
According to a report in the Fort Myers News-Press in 1998 after Storrs was found dead, the victim had been addicted to crack and had started engaging in prostitution to fuel her habit.
“Crack eventually becomes the controller. The desire for crack becomes the priority. Many then prostitute themselves for it,” a sheriff’s office spokesman told the outlet.
Peggy Lehman, a friend of the victim, said that Storrs “got going down the wrong track” a few years before she was found dead.
“It was really hard to watch,” she said. “The drugs and all really put a wedge into our friendship—but never the way we felt about each other.”
DNA Helps Solve Cold Case
New DNA technology led to a break in a cold case murder in California.
Barbara Becker, then 37, was found dead of stab wounds in her La Jolla house in 1979.
Becker “put up a tremendous fight for her life,” according to the San Diego Police Department, and the attacker left a trail of his own blood at the crime scene, reported NBC 7.
The case went unsolved for decades before officials reached out to the FBI for assistance late last year. Agents used a public access genealogy database to identify family members of the potential suspect. Some of the family members offered voluntary DNA samples, which officials used to compare to the DNA profile from the scene.
Through the process, the suspect was identified as Paul Jean Chartrand, who relatives confirmed lived in the area at the time of the murder. Chartrand’s DNA was available from an arrest and it matched that from the crime scene.
Chartrand died in 1995.
“The entire investigative team is grateful the case has been solved however, it is tempered by the fact it took forty years to give Barbara Becker’s family the answers they deserved and that Chartrand was able to avoid justice for 16 years after Barbara Becker’s murder,” the San Diego Police Department said in a statement obtained by 10 News.
