DNA on Knife Handle Leads to Arrest in 2003 Oklahoma City Killing
Police arrested a 59-year-old man on a murder warrant after cold case investigators re-tested the weapon used to kill Leon Harris at the Will Rogers Courts more than two decades ago.
By Imani Brooks ·
Oklahoma City police have arrested a man in connection with a 2003 killing that went unsolved for more than two decades, after new DNA testing tied him to the weapon.
Officers took 59-year-old Loyd Brown into custody on a murder warrant on Monday at a home near Britton Road and Western Avenue in northwest Oklahoma City. He is being held at the Oklahoma County Detention Center.
Cold case investigators recently had the knife used to kill Leon Harris re-tested for DNA. Police said the genetic material on the handle matched a man who had previously served prison time in Oklahoma. Brown's DNA entered a national database when he went to prison on a 2005 Oklahoma County conviction for lewd acts with a child. He has since been convicted several times of failing to register as a sex offender.
The killing took place at the Will Rogers Courts in southwest Oklahoma City. Police said Harris was stabbed three times and the weapon was left near his body. Court documents show detectives interviewed a number of people at the time, but no one was arrested and the case went cold until this year.
According to the affidavit, Brown first told investigators he did not know the victim. He changed his account several times during questioning. He eventually said Harris had broken into his home at the Will Rogers Courts and attacked him with a knife, and that he forced Harris out of the residence, where the man fell on the knife. Police noted that Harris's wounds did not match that description.
The arrest took place at a property whose owner, David Blankenship, said he had no idea a murder suspect was staying there. Blankenship said Brown and a woman had been living in a tent in his backyard without permission for nearly a year, and that he is not related to either of them.
"I told them three or four times, 'I said you all need to move off my property,'" Blankenship said. "It just goes in one ear and out the other."
Blankenship said officers removed both people from the property. Police said the woman arrested alongside Brown had no connection to the murder.
Source: News 9 (KWTV)
