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Athens police say they have in custody the suspect responsible for the murder of Pamela Crisler, found dead in her apartment August 21, 2002 - and it was a DNA match years later that did it.

Crisler, 49, was a mental health and substance abuse counselor, found violently stabbed to death at the College Place Apartments off West Broad Street in Athens - a complex now called University Oaks. Police didn't have any good leads at the time, until a break came late in 2017.

“The (CODIS) system indicated that there was a match to the DNA profile entered November 2017, to the crime scene evidence that was entered back in 2002," said Sgt. David Norris with Athens-Clarke County police.

Turns out, 34-year-old Abdus Salaam Laroche. of Decatur, was the match. "The individual that we have arrested for this now in 2018 was not somebody that was on their radar back in 2002," Norris tells WSB.

Laroche last year was arrested on a minor charge in DeKalb County. As condition of his probation, he had to submit DNA. "Over the past several months, we've been going back to track down what he was doing back in 2002 in the Athens area," said Norris. That led up to Laroche's arrest in Clayton County this week.

Sgt. Norris says it was he who delivered news of the arrest to the family of Crisler. "The family was very receptive of this and of course emotional. Very glad that we were able to identify the person responsible," said Norris. "Even a case that's 16 years old, there's always that possibility we may get that right lead or that right break in the case that we've been looking for all these years."