After more than four decades of uncertainty and a case grown cold, a Travis County grand jury has indicted a 78-year-old man for the capital murder of a University of Texas at Austin nursing student Susan Wolfe, who was 25 years old at the time of her death in 1980. According to KVUE, the indictment comes following the breakthrough provided by contemporary DNA testing conducted by the Austin Police Department (APD) Cold Case Unit and the Texas Department of Public Safety's Crime Laboratory.
Deck Brewer Jr., now indicted for the decades-old crime, was matched with DNA evidence at scene through a profile entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), as reported by Good Morning America. Brewer had already been incarcerated in Massachusetts for an unrelated parole violation. His DNA at the crime scene answered questions from the fateful night of January 9, 1980, when Wolfe was abducted on Franklin Avenue, assaulted, and later found murdered in an alley at 2000 E. 17th St.
At the outset, the investigation by the APD gathered momentum with over forty persons of interest interviewed and multiple leads pursued. However, the trail went cold, and the injustice of Wolfe's death remained unresolved until sophisticated DNA technology breathed life into the long-halted pursuit of her killer. "It's the first step to closure, but we are not going rest until the people responsible for this heinous crime are brought to justice," Susan Wolfe's brother, Charles Wolfe, told KVUE in a statement that captured both relief and a continued yearning for full accountability.
The case is far from conclusion as detectives continue the search for an additional passenger rumored to have been in the car during Wolfe's abduction. The APD Cold Case Unit encourages anyone with information to come forward. Brewer, for his part, recalled being in Austin and San Antonio at the time of the murder but has invoked his right to counsel when informed of the DNA evidence implicating him at a homicide scene. Further details and the ongoing investigation echo the complex web of time and memory, aiming to untangle the threads of a cold case warmed by the relentless push for truth and justice.
