US police solve 44-year-old student rape and murder case using DNA evidence

Austin police say they have identified a suspect in the 1980 murder and sexual abuse of a Texas nursing student. A 78-year-old man has been charged with murder after officers identified him as a suspect using genetic genealogy.

Police charged Deck Brewer Jr., a man already serving a prison sentence for another crime, with the murder of 25-year-old Susan Leigh Wolfe.

According to an Austin Police Department press release, Brewer kidnapped and murdered Wolfe on January 9, 1980, around 10 p.m. as she was on her way to a friend's house just one block from her residence.

At the time of her death, Wolfe was four days away from her 26th birthday and had recently begun her nursing school at the University of Texas at Austin.

Authorities reported that a witness saw a driver get out of his car, “hug Wolfe with all his might,” and then push her inside while covering her head with a coat. According to the witness, there was another passenger in the vehicle, “but he did not see what the passenger was doing during the kidnapping.”

The next morning, authorities in Austin discovered Wolfe's body in an alley.

Authorities said she was shot in the head and her death was ruled a homicide.

According to police, a doctor performing an autopsy on the crash found signs of sexual assault by one of the two unidentified people in the vehicle.

Investigators followed several leads and found numerous cars matching the witness' description in the year following the murder. According to police, they questioned at least six suspects and more than 40 suspects over the years.

The Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab received evidence of Wolfe's sexual assault from investigators in April 2023.

After examining the material, forensic experts concluded that it was suitable for investigation, according to police.

The test results, which provided Austin police with a male profile of the perpetrator, were available in February.

According to police, the six people whose DNA profiles did not match the evidence in their possession were excluded from the investigation.

The profile was then added to national, state and local databases of DNA profiles of convicted criminals, unexplained crime scene evidence and missing persons maintained by the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), according to authorities.

In March 2024, authorities determined that the evidence matched a profile in CODIS linked to Brewer.

Officials added that Brewer's DNA and DNA evidence discovered in Wolfe's body during the autopsy were a direct match when a DNA search warrant was executed. Brewer told investigators he was in Austin and San Antonio at the time of Wolfe's death, according to police reports. Brewer was charged with the murder of Susan Leigh Wolfe on Aug. 14, according to police, who also issued an arrest warrant.

The search for the other passenger who was in the vehicle the night of Wolfe's kidnapping is still ongoing, police said.