Gary Sanford Raub, a homeless man who had been a regular on the streets of Capitol Hill, was arrested this week in a 1976 Kennebec, Maine murder case:

Gary Sanford Raub, 63, is listed as a transient on the Kennebec County Superior Court complaint charging him with murder and criminal homicide in the first degree and saying he “knowingly inflicted great physical suffering” on Blanche M. Kimball, a retired dental technician and practical nurse who occasionally took in boarders.

The Seattle Police Department aided the investigation by tricking Raub into providing a DNA sample in July by asking him to participate in a chewing gum survey.

The Stranger featured this interview with Raub in 2010 following the shooting death of his friend John T. Williams by SPD:

As we spoke, Raub told me a bit about himself. He said he served in the war in Vietnam and was held in a prisoner of war camp in Cambodia for three years. While he was a POW, he said, he lived in a bamboo cage set in a river that rushed around his legs. His captors used a gaff on him and yanked out his teeth, he said, and as he talked, I could see his toothless gums. One day, Raub said, he was working in a rice paddy, when he saw a sharp rock in the water. He fell to his knees and stuffed the rock down his throat, he said. That night he used the rock to cut open the bamboo cage and escaped. Using skills he had learned as a boy, he studied the night sky and found his way to his base. Raub said that when he got there, no one could believe he was still alive. Now it’s 40 years later, and he says he sleeps outside the Value Village thrift store. He quit staying in shelters after being robbed repeatedly. In the mornings, he trudges to the coffee shop. I have seen him trudging, like an old devout Buddhist, though he is a Christian.

Raub had a local criminal record peppered with relatively minor incidents until an October, 2011 assault. Around the Hill, he was a mostly quiet presence who occasionally found a seat inside one of the neighborhood cafes to have a cup of coffee. We saw him shuffled along here and there. Sad to have him wrapped up in such an awful story.