Mary Moore Searight, a prominent landowner and benefactor, was killed in 1996 at her home in Paris, Texas. In 2023, DNA obtained from a tenant, David Paul Cady Jr., linked him to her final moments, the authorities say.
On Aug. 18, 1996, Mary Moore Searight, 86, a prominent landowner and philanthropist, was found in her home in Paris, Texas, where she had been badly beaten, strangled and sexually assaulted.
She was barely alive when her caretaker made the discovery, and Ms. Searight was airlifted to a hospital about 100 miles south in Dallas, the authorities said. She died there three days later.
Ms. Searight, a landlord and community benefactor, rented out many properties she owned in the Paris area, and as part of its investigation, the Paris Police Department interviewed a number of tenants, including David Paul Cady Jr., then 25 years old, on the night the crime was discovered.
The police asked him about what appeared to be cuts on his right hand, and Mr. Cady gave inconsistent explanations, the authorities said. They also took a DNA swab of his hand, but that turned up nothing, and afterward the case went dark for nearly three decades.
That swab obtained long ago eventually led to Mr. Cady’s indictment last month on a first-degree murder charge in Ms. Searight’s death, the Texas Department of Public Safety announced in a news release on Thursday.
With the help of up-to-date technology, further analysis conducted in 2023 of the swab obtained from Mr. Cady’s hand determined that it contained Ms. Searight’s DNA, tying him to the crime, according to the police.