Metro detectives have made an arrest in a cold case murder mystery first highlighted last year by 8 news NOW.

A suspect arrested Wednesday morning is being charged with a 2004 sexual assault, but police have evidence linking the same man to a murder six years earlier near the Oliver Ranch.

The I-Team first revealed the link between the two crimes last October.

Cold case detectives have known for a while now that the murder and the rape were related because DNA evidence connected the two, but they could not find a match in any DNA data bases, that is, until this week. The suspect gave them the evidence they needed after he was arrested on a different charge.

Metro detectives previously obtained a grainy image, footage from a security camera at a fast food restaurant, recorded in 2004. The driver bought some food for a deaf woman he’d picked up, then drove her to Kyle Canyon Road and sexually assaulted her at knife point. Last October, cold case detectives Dean O’Kelley and Ken Hefner said they were hopeful the attacker might still be in town.

“We’re hoping somebody might be able to look at it and say, hey, that’s so and so, and we can go from there,” Hefner said.

The reason these homicide veterans were working a rape case is that the DNA from the sexual assault was a match for a sample taken from a murder scene six years earlier.

The bludgeoned body of a woman was found in 1998 under a joshua tree off State Route 159 near Oliver Ranch. There were signs of a violent struggle. The woman was identified as Annie Miller, who’d often been homeless. DNA evidence from the murder scene was entered into the CODIS database, but it wasn’t until 2012 that the connection was made to the 2004 sexual assault case.

“They are definitely linked. The same male deposited semen in both locations. No question about that,” said Dean O’Kelley, cold case detective.

But detectives still didn’t have a name. They do now. Back in May, Brandon McGuire was arrested for a domestic violence incident. His DNA was collected at the time. Metro just learned that it matched the profile from the earlier crimes.

McGuire was apprehended Wednesday morning. He is being held on sexual assault and kidnapping charges. A murder case will take longer to put together, but cold case detectives are already working on it.

The sexual assault team meanwhile thinks McGuire may have other victims out there.

“With additional testing, we still may find additional victims who lived through it and this same sample might lead to additional cases in the future,” said Lt. David Valenta, Metro sexual assault unit.

The cold case detectives who worked the murder case say Brandon McGuire is someone they’ve had on their radar screen for a while, and not necessarily for the 1998 homicide by itself.

As the I-Team reported last year, advances in DNA testing means that their sexual assault team expects to make additional arrests of rape suspects who might think they got away with a crime.



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