A 63-year-old man has been arrested in Alabama in the 2000 slaying of a northwest Georgia woman.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Walker County Sheriff’s Office announced Friday that they have charged Clerance D. George with murder and aggravated assault in connection with the June 2000 death of Julie Ann McDonald.
McDonald, a pharmacist, was found stabbed to death in his home in LaFayette, Georgia, about 25 miles south of Chattanooga.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation
In one Friday’s press conferenceofficials said that a combination of better forensics and traditional police work had allowed them to conclude that George had killed McDonald.
Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said George was arrested in Birmingham on Aug. 22 and is awaiting extradition to Georgia. George remained in the Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham on Monday and it is unclear if he has an attorney to represent him.
George was initially identified as one of four or five suspects in the case, GBI Special Agent Joe Montgomery said, in part because George was found with the McDonald’s checkbook in neighboring Catoosa County.
“It was not an alien crime,” Wilson said. “They knew each other.”
Montgomery declined to discuss what motive George might have had for killing McDonald.
Authorities said the case was reinvestigated in 2015-2016, but tests on evidence then failed to identify a suspect. The case was re-examined over the past two years, with Montgomery saying laboratory tests linked evidence to George.
“It’s getting better every day,” Montgomery said of the technology. “It gives us hope for some of the other cases that we couldn’t solve, 20 or 30 years ago, we have that ability now.”
Montgomery added that it wasn’t just science that led to the breakthrough in the case, but also a lot of hard work by detectives, some of whom have since retired.
“There was a lot of legwork and knocking on the door,” he said, adding: “Sometimes they ran into a brick wall and they kept going.”
Wilson said McDonald’s closest surviving relatives are a niece and a nephew, who have been notified of the arrest.
“We’ve been working on this case – it’s 24 years old and we never give up on these cold cases,” he said.