Police arrested an Ohio man for a 1995 murder and sexual assault after DNA linked him to the crime.
61-year-old Clayton Bernard Foreman was arrested for the murder of Texas school teacher Mary Catherine Edwards who was a bridesmaid at Foreman’s wedding. Police were able to link Foreman to the crime through DNA and a genealogy website used by either Foreman or a family member.
“We could track it to a family, but we couldn’t track it to an individual,” Jefferson County District Attorney Bob Wortham said, per 12NewsNow.
Police were able to confirm his DNA was a match to the semen found in Edwards’ home after her murder by extracting DNA from trash left outside of Foreman’s Ohio home.
Edwards was found dead in the bathroom of her home in Beaumont, Texas on Jan. 14, 1995. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety website, she was drowned in her bathtub with her hands cuffed behind her back. Authorities focused their attention on Foreman and discovered that he had a previous conviction for raping a classmate in 1981. Like Edwards, the victim’s hands were tied behind her head.
Edwards was 31 at the time of her death. She was a classmate of Foreman’s and a bridesmaid at his wedding. Foreman and his wife divorced two years before Edwards’s murder.
