Suspect accused of kidnapping and killing University of Texas student

A 78-year-old man has been charged in the slaying of a University of Texas at Austin student who was found shot to death in an alley 40 years ago, a day after she enrolled at the school. Austin police said Friday.

Deck Brewer Jr., 78, already serving time in Massachusetts for an unrelated crime, is now accused of killing 25-year-old Susan Leigh Wolfe after modern forensics matched her DNA- the one found on the victim, authorities said.

Wolfe was abducted a block away from her home while walking to a friend’s house around 10 p.m. on Jan. 9, 1980, police said. She had enrolled at the University of Texas Austin School of Nursing that same day.

A witness to the kidnapping told detectives they saw a person get out of a 1970 Dodge Polara and put a coat over Wolfe’s head before forcing her into the car, police said. Wolfe’s body was found the next morning in Austin.

The medical examiner found evidence that Wolfe had been strangled, but determined that she died of a single gunshot wound to the head, according to police. A pathologist also found evidence that the victim was sexually assaulted by one of the suspects.

During the course of the investigation, detectives located 40 persons of interest and interviewed at least six suspects, some of whom lived across the country.

Wolfe’s case went cold until last year, when detectives turned over evidence of her sexual assault to the state crime lab. Austin police received notification from the lab in March that the DNA they provided likely matched Brewer’s.

Brewer told detectives in July that he was in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, around the time Wolfe was killed, police said.

It’s unclear what crime Brewer is serving time for in Massachusetts. However, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections told HuffPost in an email that he is in custody at the Massachusetts Treatment Center, a segregated facility that houses male inmates identified as sex offenders.

Austin police say they continue to investigate Wolfe’s case and are following leads to identify another suspect, the passenger in the car at the time of the abduction.

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