The 1974 murder of high school student Carla Walker went unsolved for 46 years, authorities said.
A 77-year-old suspect in the 1974 killing of Texas cheerleader Carla Walker has been indicted by a grand jury on a capital murder charge.
Glen Samuel McCurley had been a person of interest in the initial investigation, but investigators said they had no evidence at that time connecting him to the slaying, authorities said. He denied any involvement in Walker's death or abduction at that time.
He is currently being held in lieu of $500,000 bail at the Tarrant County Jail, according to online records.
Police announced McCurley's arrest in September in connection with 46-year-old unsolved case.
DNA testing not available at the time led to his arrest, police said.
The arrest may finally bring peace to her former boyfriend, who was with her when she was abducted in 1974.Rodney McCoy was the starting quarterback for his Texas high school team and Walker was on the varsity squad when the 17-year-old girl was yanked from his car as they sat in a bowling alley parking lot.
For McCoy, who told police he passed out after being pistol-whipped by the man who took Walker, it has been a long wait for justice, said investigator Paul Holes. He interviewed McCoy earlier this year.
“He was under a cloud of suspicion for practically his entire adult life and now — at least as I understand the circumstances — is completely exonerated,” Holes told Oxygen.com after the arrest. “The DNA and genealogy technology used works in both ways: catches the responsible and exonerates the innocent. It did both in this case.”
In his earlier interview with the investigator, for an instalment of Oxygen’s “The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes,” McCoy said he and Walker were making out in his car when the attacker opened the passenger door, pulled Walker out, and began hitting him with a gun.
“Carla was screaming, ‘Quit hitting him,’ so my assumption, he hit me several times,” McCoy said in “The DNA of Murder” interview. “Blood was just flowing down in my eyes and my face and everything, and it was like I was paralyzed.”
McCoy said the man pulled the trigger several times, but the gun didn't go off. Walker screamed, “Go get my dad,” he recounted. When he came to, he sped to Carla's home and banged on the door, blood running down his face. Someone called police, he said.
Carla's body was found three days later, in a ditch. She had been raped, tortured, injected with morphine and then strangled, authorities said.
McCurley was initially a person of interest in the case, police said, because he had recently purchased a handgun with the same caliber as a magazine found at the crime scene. He told police the gun had been stolen and denied any involvement in Carla's death.
He also denied any involvement when police questioned him before his arrest, authorities said.
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