COPS NAB DAVID GRIMES IN 1974 MURDER OF WIDOW, 75

BUSTED

SHE was smothered to death in her bed 34-years ago, but although cops had a suspect they didn't have enough to nail him.
At the time they suspected David Grimes, now 64, in the death of 75-year-old Ruth VanHouten, because he'd been arrested several times near her Ithaca, NY home for residential burglaries. 
Many of the cases involved residential burglaries and the assault of elderly women who lived alone.  But thanks to their excellent and painstaking evidence collection at the time, in January 2010, when Lieutenant Christopher Townsend reviewed the case he got a break.
When he sent it the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center in Albany, using current technology, DNA was gathered from the evidence and entered into a DNA database.