MARION, Ind. (WTHR) - Police believe they have captured the man who murdered an 81-year-old woman 13 years ago.
For the victim's neighborhood and for the victim's son, word of the accused killer's arrest, more than a decade after the crime, "I'm not the forgiving type. I will never forgive this man. The only thing he could do that would satisfy me is to go to prison for the rest of his life if he's guilty," said David Payne.
It was May 12, 2003, the day after Mother's Day, when they found the body of Betty Payne in her house on Marion's Gallatin Street.
The grandmother, who lived alone, had been strangled.
"It was a horrible crime. He raped my mother, 81 years old," David Payne said.
Thirteen years ago, her's was the third murder in Marion in three weeks. Police hit dead ends, but they collected an important piece of evidence at the crime scene that would later pay off - the suspect's DNA.
"Apparently, the rape kits in Florida all of a sudden got processed and in the interim, they determined that DNA matched other crimes. My mother's case being one of them," Payne said.
The DNA allegedly links 61-year-old Roman Cruz Urista to sexual assaults in Ohio in 2001 and 2008 and a Florida case in 2000, three years before Betty Payne's murder.
"It's been frustrating. The whole dang thing has been very frustrating," said the victim's son.
Because if the Florida DNA sample went to the national database right away, he wonders if his mother's murder would've been prevented, as well as the other crimes in Ohio.
"We've never had no drama in our neighborhood. That just messed everybody up, you know," said Willard Spears Jr., who lived down the street from the victim.
Neighbors have never forgotten the quiet woman who lived in the neighborhood, who never hurt anyone.
"I used to cut her grass for her and anything she wanted. She'd give me a little extra change. That was that. And that was devastating," Spears said.
It was also devastating to her son, a Marion attorney, who wrote a book about his mother to keep public attention on the case. David Payne even ran for prosecutor three times.
His wife asked once if he thought he could win.
"I said, 'No, I can't win. But I don't want to give up'," he said.
The suspect was sitting in a jail in Ohio on a misdemeanor charge when his DNA matched the database. He'll eventually be extradited to Indiana to face charges in Betty Payne's murder.
