Decades After Infamous Killing, Suspect Arrested Under Alias

Police have made an arrest in a notorious 35-year-old cold case in California after a DNA hit led deputies to a man living under a fake name in Arizona, reports KTLA. Authorities say advanced DNA testing on a piece of long-stored evidence identified 64-year-old James Lawhead Jr. as the suspect in the 1991 kidnapping and killing of 31-year-old Cindy Wanner, who vanished from her Granite Bay home the day after Thanksgiving. Police found her 11-month-old baby unharmed in a high chair at the home, notes ABC News.

Wanner's body was found three weeks later in a remote area near Foresthill, and investigators say she had been raped and strangled. Lawhead had been released from prison earlier that year after serving time for sex crimes against a child, but he was nowhere to be found when the new DNA testing pointed to him as a suspect. Authorities eventually tracked him down in Bullhead City, Arizona, where he had been living under the alias "Vincent Reynolds." Detectives used facial recognition technology to confirm his identity.

His sister, 71-year-old Terry Lawhead Steele, was also arrested in South Carolina on an accessory charge after investigators said records contradicted her claims she hadn't heard from him in decades.