The Austin Police Department claims they have identified a suspect in the 1980 murder and sexual assault of a Texas nursing student case. A 78-year-old man has been charged with murder after officials identified him as a suspect following the use of genetic genealogy.
The police charged Deck Brewer Jr, a man already serving a prison sentence for an unrelated crime, with 25-year-old Susan Leigh Wolfe's murder.
According to a press release from the Austin Police Department, on January 9, 1980, at about 10 pm, Brewer abducted and murdered Wolfe when she was on her way to a friend's house, just a block from her residence.
At the time of her death, Wolfe was four days shy of turning 26 and had recently started classes at the University of Texas Austin School of Nursing.
Authorities reported that a witness saw a driver exit their car, give Wolfe a "bear hug," and then push her inside while covering her head with a coat. There was another passenger in the vehicle, according to the witness, "but he did not see what the passenger did during the abduction."
The following morning, authorities in Austin discovered Wolfe's body in an alley.
According to authorities, she was shot in the head and died as a result. Her death was declared a homicide.
Police claimed a doctor doing an autopsy discovered signs of a sexual assault by one of the two unidentified individuals seen in the vehicle.
Investigators pursued several leads and located numerous automobiles matching the witness's description for the year following the murder. According to police, they have interviewed at least six suspects and over 40 people of interest over the years.
The Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory received evidence of Wolfe's sexual assault from investigators in April 2023.
After reviewing the material, forensic specialists concluded it was eligible for testing, according to the police.
The test results, which gave Austin police a male profile for the perpetrator, were obtained in February.
According to police, the six individuals who did not match the DNA profile of the evidence they possessed were eliminated from the investigation.
After that, according to authorities, the profile was added to the national, state and municipal databases of DNA profiles involving convicted criminals, unresolved crime scene evidence, and missing people maintained by the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.
Authorities discovered in March 2024 that the evidence corresponded to a profile linked to Brewer in CODIS.
Officials added that Brewer's DNA and the DNA evidence discovered in Wolfe's body during the autopsy directly matched when a DNA search warrant was executed. Brewer told detectives that he was in Austin and San Antonio at the time of Wolfe's death, according to police reports. Brewer was charged with Susan Leigh Wolfe's murder on August 14, according to police, who also issued an arrest warrant.
The search for the other passenger who was in the vehicle on the night Wolfe was kidnapped is still on, according to the police.