Indiana man is arrested after woman, 23, was raped and strangled in woods over 30 YEARS ago - in the latest homicide cold case breakthrough thanks to advanced DNA testing.
A Loogootee, Indiana man was arrested in connection to the fall of 1989 murder of 23-year-old Mary Luicile Willfong.
Willfong was found by deer hunters in the woods of Georgia after being sexually assaulted and strangled, police said.
Over the years, police went after several suspects but said the DNA did not match the evidence taken from the victim's body.
At the time of the murder, investigators had been told that Willfong, prior to her murder, had been seen getting into a tractor-trailer with a man at the Forest Park farmers market outside of Atlanta.
That tip prompted several suspect interviews, but all were eventually dismissed.
But then, in early 2019, Investigator Marc Mansfield was assigned to the freshly re-opened case and submitted the original evidence to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab to be tested with newer technology.
He also took the evidence to Miami for a genetic genealogy trace using DNA from Willfong.
As a result of his actions, investigators were able to identity 59-year-old Larry Padgett Jr. as a suspect.
The FBI Evidence Recovery Team and Washington Police Department in Indiana were able to get DNA evidence from Padgett and match it to the DNA taken from Willfong's body.
Last week, arrest warrants were issued for Padgett and police drove to Indiana to arrest him.
During the course of the investigation, law enforcement officers discovered more evidence linking Padgett to Willfong's murder.
Padgett is currently being held in Indiana until he can be extradited.
Padget is one of many killers who committed murder several decades ago and is just now being brought to justice because of advancements in DNA testing technology.
Other killers who were ultimately apprehended thanks to advancements in DNA tracing used by law enforcement include: the Golden State Killer, the 1987 killer of Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg, and the killing of Jennifer Brinkman in 1998.
Californians were terrorized in the 1970s and the 1980s by the Golden State Killer before a suspect was finally apprehended.
Dozens of rapes and murders went unsolved until Joseph James DeAngelo, now 77, was captured in 2018 with the help of advances in DNA technology.
To finally identify and arrest DeAngelo, investigators compared the killer's DNA from the crime scenes to the genetic profiles that are publicly available on genealogical websites.
Law enforcement found that it matched one of DeAngelo's relatives, which eventually led to him, proving that DNA could be the most innovative way to catch killers.
DeAngelo pleaded guilty to 13 murders and 13 rape-related charges that spanned much of California between 1975 and 1986.
He also admitted victimizing at least 87 people at 53 separate crime scenes spanning 11 California counties, though some of the crimes were too old to be formally charged.
On August 21, 2020, DeAngelo was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The plea deal spared him the death penalty.
William Talbott II, a former truck driver from Seattle-Tacoma, was convicted of killing Tanya Van Cuylenborg, 18, and her boyfriend, Jay Cook, 20.
The killings occurred in 1987, but Talbott wasn't arrested until 2018, after authorities used a genealogy website to identify him as the person who left his DNA on one of the victims.
In 2015, Talbott's cousin Chelsea Rustad entered a contest and won a DNA 'spit kit' and uploaded her profile - which led to Talbott's connection to the murders.
He became the first person convicted as a result of genealogy research, PEOPLE reported.
'Police told me that without my DNA, he would not have been arrested,' Rustad previously told PEOPLE. 'There would have been no trial. That family would have never had answers.'
Jeffrey Paul Premo, 52, was arrested in December 2022 in connection to the 1998 death of 19-year-old Jennifer Brinkman.
The arrest was made more than 20 years after Brinkman's murder with the help of advanced DNA technology and genetic genealogy.
Investigators say they matched his DNA to an ax that was used in the murder and found at the crime scene in 1998, PEOPLE reported.
Brinkman is believed to have met her killer on a phone chat line. Investigators from early in the investigation found a letter the suspect wrote to Brinkman before her death that indicated the pair had met, police said at a press conference in 2022.
Premo was booked into the Snohomish County Jail and posted a $250,000 bond in December 2022.