Nebraska man arrested for four-decade-old murder of Utah grandmother

They say in America there’s about a 40 percent chance you’ll literally get away with murder. At those shocking odds you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in the clear 37 years down the line.

Not so for Bryan Reed, 55, from Nebraska, who is finally set to face justice for a horrific crime committed when he was a teenager living in Utah in the early 80s.

Reed allegedly broken into the Salt Lake City home of 72-year-old Wilhelmina Reid on the night of August 18, 1982, sexually assaulting the victim before bludgeoning her to death.

He moved from Utah to Nebraska shortly afterwards, and only became a suspect in the unsolved case a year ago, after Salt Lake police learned he was in the area around the time of the murder, Deseret News reports.

Investigators were then able to match Reed’s DNA with an unknown male sample collected from the crime scene on the night of the killing, police said.

When reinterviewed earlier this month and told of the DNA match, Reed reportedly confessed.

Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown said his department was delighted to finally get their man. “These are cases that we want to get solved. Cold cases are just as important to our detectives as are current cases and we are constantly reviewing them”, he stated.

Reed is now being held in a Nebraska prison pending extradition to Utah, where he faces charges of murder and aggravated burglary.