BRAZOS COUNTY, Texas – Texas investigators say they've solved the 37-year-old murder of a Brazos County realtor using DNA evidence.
Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk announced that James Otto Earhart was the prime suspect in the 1981 murder of realtor Virginia Freeman. He was a resident of Brazos County at the time of the murder.
Earhart was executed in 1999 for another crime, the kidnapping and murder of 9-year-old Kandy Kirtland in 1987.
Sheriff Kirk says the information comes from DNA that was analyzed for ancestry information.
A DNA database found second cousins and great grandparents of the suspect, which is how suspect was identified. The DNA was then matched to Earhart's son, called a confirmed parent-child match. Sheriff Kirk called this "clear" evidence that Earhart killed Virginia Freeman.