For more than three decades, there were no arrests in the killing of Cynthia Gonzalez, a 25-year-old whose body was found decomposing in a rural area south of Fort Worth in 1991. She had been shot several times.
But that began to change in September, when 15 students took their seats in a new criminology class at the University of Texas at Arlington.
This week, the Arlington Police Department announced that the students had helped lead detectives to an arrest in Ms. Gonzalez’s killing after their class dug into her case file. On Nov. 6, Janie Perkins, 63, who had been a friend of Ms. Gonzalez’s, was taken into custody in Azle, Texas, and charged with murder, the police said.
It was the first arrest to arise from the course, Forensic Assessment of Cold Case Files, which is new this year and was conceived as a way to put fresh eyes on old murders.
“When we launched our cold case partnership with U.T.A., we always hoped we’d get an outcome like this one day,” Chief Al Jones of the Arlington police said in a statement, referring to the university. “I don’t think any of us expected that lightning would strike the first time.”
For the Arlington Police Department, which does not have a cold case unit but assigns old cases to detectives to tackle alongside active homicide investigations, the students’ work has raised hopes for progress on similar cases. The Gonzalez killing is one of three that the University of Texas class was examining for the department.
For Jessica Roberts, Ms. Gonzalez’s daughter, who was 6 when her mother was killed, the apparent breakthrough was a relief. “The grief never subsided,” she said at a news conference on Monday. “It came in waves, year after year.”
“This is going to give so many families so much hope,” she said.
Ms. Perkins has been released on bond. The Law Offices of Gill & Brissette, the Fort Worth firm representing her, said in a statement that she was “innocent of the allegations and looks forward to the opportunity to clear her name in a court of law.”
“We are confident that when all the facts are presented, the truth will emerge,” the statement said.
Advances in forensic science, genetic matching and the search potential of national databases have accelerated work on cold cases. But old-school investigative skills can still be a turning point in leading to people who for years harbor a secret criminal history.
Ms. Gonzalez, who the authorities said was working as an “adult entertainer,” was last seen leaving her home in Arlington on Sept. 16, 1991, to meet with a client, the police said. Her former husband reported her missing the next day. Her body was found on Sept. 22 in a rural area of Johnson County, Texas, the authorities said. She had been shot several times.
Detectives collected physical evidence and started pursuing leads and conducting interviews, mostly with men, Detective Anthony Stafford, who inherited the investigation last year, said in an interview.
Ms. Perkins, whose romantic partner had ended their relationship to be with Ms. Gonzalez, was a person of interest in the case. She failed polygraph tests when asked if she knew who had killed Ms. Gonzalez, but the results were not admissible in court and she said she was not involved in the killing, the police said.
She was never charged.
Patricia Eddings, the professor who leads the criminology class and was working in forensics with the medical examiner’s office in Tarrant County, Texas, when Ms. Gonzalez was killed, said in an interview that prosecutors were not comfortable filing charges based on the circumstantial evidence they had gathered.
More than 30 years later, that’s where her students came in. They were not given access to the physical evidence, but they pored over photographs, reports, interview transcripts and other evidence that had been collected on a flash drive, eventually bridging decades-old detective work with advances in forensic science.
The students had access to “every document, every line, every typewriter and floppy disk,” Detective Stafford said.
After about two months, staying hours after class and arriving early, the students had a hunch. They submitted 35 questions to Detective Stafford, some refocusing on Ms. Perkins.
“I think the failed polygraph made her stand out a bit, and we should look at this a little bit more,” said Jenna Lewis, one of the students.
“We had a fire lit in us,” she said. “We wanted to do whatever we could.”
That feedback “sparked my interest,” Detective Stafford said. “I did not even consider a female suspect. I immediately was intrigued.”
“We pulled everything with her statement and interview and polygraph and started to match evidence on the crime scene,” he said.
The Tarrant County District Attorney’s office agreed in late October that there was probable cause to charge Ms. Perkins. A warrant was obtained to allow a DNA sample to be taken and analyzed, Detective Stafford said.
The case generated media attention this week, partly because of the investigative input from the students.
In its statement, the law firm representing Ms. Perkins urged the public and the news media to “refrain from speculation or premature judgments.”
“Our legal team is fully prepared to defend against these charges and ensure that Janie receives a fair and impartial trial,” the firm said.
Christine Hauser is a Times reporter who writes breaking news stories, features and explainers.
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