The Phoenix Police Department announced today that it's won an indictment for a suspect in a murder/sexual assault that happened in 1994.
Who doesn't love a good cold-case file.
On October 21, 1994, 35-year-old Eric Harmon was found murdered and sexually assaulted in Papago Park.
Phoenix police Sergeant Tommy Thompson tells New Times that police investigated the case for about a year and came up with few leads. The case was ultimately turned over to the PPD's Cold Case Unit, where it sat until recently.
Thompson says detectives recently took some DNA found at the crime scene and plugged it into a DNA data-base and found a match with a man serving time in a Florida prison for unrelated charges.
Phoenix detectives went to Florida to meet the suspect, 40-year-old Jeffery Lockwood, and while Thompson says details of the visit are a unclear, he assumes Lockwood will be extradited back to Arizona to face first-degree murder charges.
Thompson says solving these types of cold cases is becoming an exciting trend, and he's impressed with the department's success in tracking down killers years after they commit crimes.
"I've been in the cop-shop for 27 years," he says. "It's amazing to see this evolve."
Given the tools law enforcement now has in its arsenal to help solve cold cases, Thompson has a message for would-be murderers: "If you kill someone, we're gonna keep coming after you."