A Connecticut man was arrested by police and held on $ 2 million bond on Saturday in connection with the murder of a teenager nearly 17 years ago.
Willie Robinson, 52, is accused of strangling Jessica Keyworth, 16, and leaving her on the basement steps of an apartment building just blocks from her known residence after Memorial Day Weekend 2004, according to the American Republican newspaper in Waterbury , Connecticut.
Keyworth took a train to Waterbury that arrived just before midnight on Memorial Day to meet with a friend, but she was found murdered on a staircase the next morning.
“We are very happy to be able to close and do justice to the girl’s family,” said Waterbury police chief Fernando Spagnolo, according to the newspaper. “A lot of that had to do with a lot of perseverance from the detectives involved in the case.”
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Spagnolo praised the detectives as “incomparable”.
The chief did not specify what led investigators to Robinson, but said they were aided by evidence from DNA and forensic science, FOX 61 in Hartford reported. It was not clear how she ended up on the stairs.
Willie Robinson. (Waterbury Police)
Investigators searched the city after Keyworth’s murder, even traveling to Las Vegas in 2007 to interview someone about the case, but there was never an arrest.
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Robinson was arrested for an unrelated crime for interfering with a policeman a few months after Keyworth’s murder, but it is unclear whether he was interviewed about her death at the time. The officials did not say whether there was any known previous connection between Robinson and Keyworth.
Robinson has a prison record that includes sexual assault and risk of injury, the newspaper reported, but there was no record of any convictions.
He faces a murder charge.
Police placed Keyworth’s unsolved case in a specially designed deck of cards sold to inmates that presents cases filed in different letters. Keyworth was the three of hearts. The cards have led to hundreds of complaints in cases, but police have not said whether the card helped lead to Robinson’s arrest.
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The investigation is ongoing and the police said the $ 50,000 reward for information that helped lead to arrest and conviction in the case is still available, the newspaper reported.