Will arrest in old Michigan murder case clear the man doing life for the crime?
By Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan-Seville, NBC News
The arrest of a Michigan man in a horrific 17-year-old rape-murder case has reopened old wounds for the victim’s family and cast fresh doubt on the guilt of the man who was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison.
Michigan State Police on Tuesday arrested 35-year-old Jason Anthony Ryan, of Davison, Mich., and charged him with homicide. Legal sources tell NBC News the arrest occurred after a DNA test of semen found at the scene of the murder matched Ryan’s profile in a national database.
The rape and murder of Geraldine Montgomery, a 68-year-old widow, was the worst crime in memory in Kalkaska, Mich., a town of about 2,200 residents in the northern reaches of the state. In October 1996, someone broke into her home in the village, beat and raped her, then shoved her into the trunk of her running Buick sedan and left her to asphyxiate.
Investigators homed in on Jamie Lee Peterson. In a series of interrogations, the 23-year-old, already in jail on a sex charge and with a long history of mental illness, confessed. Despite quickly recanting, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole.
The outcome notwithstanding, Peterson’s defenders insist the now 39-year-old had nothing to do with Montgomery’s murder.
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