After more than 4 decades, DNA leads to arrest in nursing student’s killing

One January evening in 1980, a 25-year-old nursing student began walking to a friend’s house.

She never made it. Instead, a man got out of a car, grabbed her, and drove her away.

Her body was found the next morning. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled and shot, police say – and their search for her killer began.

More than four decades later, there’s been a breakthrough in the cold case: Police have arrested a 78-year-old man whose DNA sample matched evidence from the autopsy, Austin, Texas, police said in a press release.

The Austin Municipal Court on Wednesday found probable cause to issue an arrest warrant charging Deck Brewer Jr. with murder in the death of Susan Leigh Wolfe. He already was being held by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections on unrelated charges.

The turning point came this year with DNA testing, police say.

Wolfe enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin nursing school on January 9, 1980, police say. That night around 10, she was walking to a friend’s house and was kidnapped about a block from home.

A witness told police a car stopped and the driver exited, grabbed Wolfe in a ”bear hug,” placed a coat over her head, and forced her into the car. The passenger door opened, but the witness said he did not see what the passenger did during the abduction. The witness said the car was a 1970 Dodge Polara.

Wolfe’s body was found early the next morning in an Austin alley. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled and shot. Investigators found DNA evidence at the scene.

“During the first year of the investigation, APD investigators tirelessly followed up on dozens of leads, investigated and tracked down numerous cars fitting the witness’s description, produced over 40 persons of interest, and interviewed at least six suspects, some as far away as New York state,” the police press release says.

In April 2023, detectives from the APD Cold Case Unit submitted evidence from the sexual assault to the Texas DPS Crime Laboratory. This year, police learned of a possible match in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) of convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence and missing persons.

They obtained a DNA sample from Brewer, who told them he had been in Austin at the time of the murder.

“Brewer invoked his right to counsel after he was told his DNA was found at the scene of a homicide,” the police release says.

“On August 14, 2024, based on the totality of the investigation thus far, the Austin Municipal Court found probable cause to issue an arrest warrant charging Deck Brewer Jr. with the murder of Susan Leigh Wolfe,” it says.

Information about Brewer’s arraignment and his attorney were not immediately available.

CNN affiliate KEYE-TV spoke with a cold case expert about advances in DNA technology that have led to many cold cases being solved after decades.

It’s possible investigators didn’t have enough of the DNA sample originally, said Michael Arntfield of Western University in Ontario, Canada.

“Until recently with improvements in DNA technology, a considerable amount of DNA was required to be uploaded to the system to be compared,” he said.

The station said Wolfe’s parents died since her killing, as did her then roommate.