Photo: Daviess County Sheriff’s Office
In 1989, a group of deer hunters discovered a woman’s body in the woods. She was identified as Mary Willfong, 23, and she had been strangled and raped, officials said at the time. After an investigation, law enforcement was unable to connect anyone to the crime.
The case was eventually closed and declared cold.
But 30 years later, in 2019, officials from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department decided to take another crack at the case. On March 1, officials arrested Larry Padgett, now 59, in Washington, Ind.
It started with investigators taking the original evidence and submitting it to DNA International for a genealogy trace to be completed on the DNA taken from the victim, the sheriff’s office said in a post onits Facebook page.
A familial match was made, and law enforcement officials were able to identify a suspect in Washington, Ind. With assistance from the FBI, officials were able to “retrieve additional evidence from the suspect” and conduct additional testing.
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“This testing resulted in a match with the DNA taken from the body of Mary Willfong,” officials stated in the release.
Sheriff Freeman told WMAZ that Padgett is a truck driver who police believe picked up Willfong at a farmer’s market in Georgia, sexually assaulted her and strangled her to death.
“While in Indiana, Investigators were able to obtain more evidence in the case linking Padgett to the murder of Mary Willfong,” the sheriff’s office alleged in the statement.
Padgett is expected to be extradited from Indiana to Georgia where he will be charged. It was not immediately clear if he has retained an attorney to comment on his behalf.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go torainn.org.
source: people.com
