Police: DNA tests identify attacker in 1980 Illinois death

DANVILLE, Ill. (AP) - Police say investigators believe a now-deceased man killed a young woman inside her eastern Illinois home 38 years ago.

Danville officials say DNA tests on evidence found at the scene of 18-year-old Virginia Sue Nipper's March 1980 strangulation death point to James R. Lyons as her attacker. Police say Lyons lived in Danville and later Pinellas County, Florida, before his death in 2003.

Danville public safety director Larry Thomason says Lyons was an early suspect in the attack, but investigators didn't have enough evidence to charge him at the time.

Nipper's husband and mother-in-law found the couple's 15-month-old son unharmed in the house.

Bess Huls tells the (Champaign) News-Gazette that the DNA test results are bittersweet and don't erase the years of wondering what happened to her sister.