GUILTY FL - Mary Jane Barth, 85, raped & murdered, St Petersburg, 17 Sept 1976

[Beyond Belief]

ST. PETERSBURG - The day Mary Jane Barth was found dead at the entrance of a cemetery, her body punctured with 27 stab wounds, Gerald Ford was president.
"I hope they get that man off the streets, the one who killed Mary," Barth's sister, Alice, is quoted telling a reporter in a faded clipping from a newspaper that no longer publishes.
Authorities said Tuesday that they did get that man off the streets.
It just took them nearly 31 years.
Registered sex offender Alfonzo Austin, 58, was charged with first-degree murder in the Panhandle on Monday in Barth's death. The DNA from the crime scene was recently submitted to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement laboratory, and there was a match with Austin's from a 1990s case,
http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBR797894F.html

 

[OkieGranny]

From May 2008:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/public...ence-in-1976-st-petersburg-rape-murder/536863

A man arrested last year and charged with murdering an elderly woman in 1976 pleaded guilty Thursday morning and was sentenced to life in prison...

He also made incriminating statements about the murder of Ester Greene, a 67-year-old woman who was stabbed to death in the Jordan Park housing complex just four months before Barth was killed.

Police tried to link Austin to that murder with DNA, but the physical evidence in that case was too degraded, said police Lt. Mike Kovacsev.