Florida cops announced Thursday they have solved a decades-old murder of an 11-year-old girl, naming a now-dead sheriff’s deputy and preacher as the child’s likely killer.
Former St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Deputy James Howard Harrison was revealed as “the only probable suspect” in the horrific rape and murder of Lora Ann Huizar in November 1983, officials said. Harrison died in 2008.
“We have established probable cause to determine that Harrison abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered the juvenile victim and later altered the crime scene by placing the victim in a drainage ditch in an attempt to destroy physical evidence,” St. Lucie Chief Deputy Brian Hester said in a statement.
Lora disappeared on Nov. 6, 1983 while walking home from a gas station and her body was found a day later nearby, within the boundaries of Harrison’s regular patrol in western St. Lucie County, the sheriff’s office said.
The cold case heated up again last year when a private lab recovered male DNA preserved from the victim’s sexual assault kit, officials said. Harrison’s body was exhumed but the DNA had degraded and a comparison couldn’t be made, according to the sheriff’s office.
Officials said Harrison had told witnesses to leave the area where the girl’s body was discovered 20 minutes before other authorities showed up to investigate. Cold case detectives found the position of the girl’s body when others arrived didn’t match up with initial witness accounts.
Harrison, who had worked for 10 different law enforcement agencies in Florida, “exhibited a pattern of inappropriate behavior involving juvenile females,” the sheriff’s office said in the news release. Investigators now think the ex-deputy may have been behind other sex assault cases in the Sunshine State.
nypost.com
