DALLAS — After 38 years, a suspect has been arrested in the slaying and sexual assault of a 21-year-old woman behind a Dallas warehouse.
Edward Morgan, 60, was being held Friday in the Dallas County jail on a capital murder charge in the 1984 killing of Mary Jane Thompson. His bail had not been set Friday evening, and it was unclear whether he had an attorney.
The Dallas County district attorney’s office, which announced the arrest, said the office’s cold case team, Dallas police and the FBI collaborated on the case, using advanced DNA testing techniques like those that identified California’s notorious Golden State Killer.
“Working together, we continue to solve the most difficult cold cases that Dallas has ever seen,” Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Leighton D’Antoni said in a written statement.
Thompson was last seen Feb. 11, 1984, when she took a bus to the Trinity Medical Clinic on what was then Industrial Boulevard, but the center was closed.
Two days later, her body was discovered near some out-of-use railroad tracks behind a warehouse in the 2300 block of Irving Boulevard in the Stemmons Corridor. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with her own leg warmers. Her assailant had remained at large until this week, the DA’s office said.
Thompson worked at a florist’s shop and a restaurant, but she aspired to be a model. She previously lived in Houston and Los Angeles and had moved to Dallas six months before her death.
Dallas police reopened her case in 2009 and conducted DNA testing on swabs from the 1984 autopsy, but the swab matched an unknown male DNA profile. Police reopened the case again in 2018, and authorities used new forensic testing techniques to match the DNA to Morgan.
D’Antoni said authorities will continue using the new techniques to solve cold cases.
“It is not every day we are able to solve a 38-year-old cold-case capital murder,” D’Antoni said. “It takes a singular dedication and authentic commitment to justice to see it through.”
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