A North Carolina man was arrested on Thursday in the murder of Barry Crane, a renowned Hollywood director and bridge player who was bludgeoned and strangled to death more than three decades ago in his Los Angeles home.

The police in Los Angeles said the man, Edwin Hiatt, admitted during a police interview in March to killing Mr. Crane in 1985. Talking to reporters as he was guided into a jail in Burke County, Mr. Hiatt was asked by a WSOC-TV reporter if he could have been the killer.

“Anything is possible back then,” he said, because “I was big into drugs.”

The case went cold for decades, but investigators were led to North Carolina in 2018 when a fingerprint specialist matched a print from Mr. Crane’s car to Mr. Hiatt, according to The News-Herald of Morganton. An F.B.I. surveillance team took a disposable coffee cup and discarded cigarette butts without Mr. Hiatt’s knowledge, according to court documents seen by the newspaper.

Mr. Hiatt’s DNA matched cigarette butts recovered from the ashtray of Mr. Crane’s stolen car, the court documents said, according to the newspaper.