FORT WORTH — An arrest has been made in a 1997 cold case involving the death and sexual assault of a 38-year-old woman, police said Wednesday.
DNA evidence was used to connect Marcus Lee Bell, 53, of Fort Worth, to the death of Ruel Brown, said Sgt. Pedro Criado, police spokesman.
Cold case detectives got an arrest warrant for Bell and brought him into custody Tuesday, Criado said Wednesday in a news release.
The suspect remained in custody Wednesday morning, facing a charge of capital murder, according to jail records.
A Star-Telegram article in May 1997 stated that Brown's body was discovered at a vacant house in the 800 block of East Arlington Avenue.
The neighborhood is on the east side of Interstate 35W, about a half-block away from the intersection of the highway and East Arlington Avenue.
The witness saw the woman's feet sticking out of a doorway in the kitchen of the house, and investigators found her clothes neatly folded in a pile near the body.
Marks on her neck indicated she had been strangled, police said.