A Texas cold case that has stumped police for decades has been closed after the suspect linked to the killing was convicted and sentenced last week.
Susan Leigh Wolfe, a 25-year-old student at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Nursing, was kidnapped on January 9, 1980 while walking home from her first day of school. The following morning, police discovered her body in an alleyway along East 17th Street in Austin, with investigators uncovering she had been strangled and shot.
The case evaded police for decades, with officers noting the department interviewed dozens of persons of interests. Back in 2023, Detective Joe Jedynak with Austin Police’s Cold Case Unit submitted evidence from Wolfe’s case to the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory, but it wasn’t until a year later that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Combined DNA Index System found a link to a possible suspect in Massachusetts…