COLUMBUS, Ohio — It’s an arrest one Ohio family has waited more than 30 years to see.
Police say they found a match to DNA evidence left at the scene of a cold case. With modern forensic science helping connect the man they now have in custody to a 1992 murder.
Hooper’s older sister, Sandy Green, said she never lost hope the person responsible would be brought to justice.
"She had a beautiful smile,” Green said. “She was very happy, and I think I miss that.”
She said they shared a special connection.
“She couldn't wait until I had kids and got married and she'd get to meet them," Green said. "She'd get to have her own family. And I really, really am sad that she never got to have that”
Hooper’s bright future was cut short.
On March 9, 1992, police say she was found naked, beaten and stabbed to death in her Lincoln Village apartment.
She was 20 years old.
"What motivates somebody to brutally murder a young woman like her that had so much life and so much to offer, a beautiful young girl?” said Chief Deputy Rick Minerd of the Criminal Investigations Division at the Franklin County Sheriff's office. “I have no idea what kind of monster that takes to do that."
These are questions the sheriff’s office has spent the last three decades trying to answer.
It’s perseverance Minerd says is finally paying off.
"Time may fade memories, but it doesn't erase the evidence. And that evidence is what's led us here today,” he said.
At the time of the murder, investigators found someone else’s DNA on Hooper’s body, but Minerd said it took time for forensic technology, databases and resources to develop to the point detectives could track down who the DNA belonged to.
"Quite frankly, it was the missing link for all of these years,” Minerd said. “We had a profile from 1992, but that profile was unidentified."
That is, until last year when Bruce Daniels was identified as a person of interest in the case.
Law enforcement officials found a piece of trash with the 58-year-old’s DNA on it. Deputies say it’s the same DNA that was on hooper.
“It took my breath away, honestly, for a few seconds,” said Detective Chuck Clark with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office. “I got a call from BCI, and I just went...finally.”
Daniels was arrested in Washington in December and extradited to Franklin County this week, where he’s now facing charges of rape and murder in connection with Amy Hooper’s death.
Clark was emotional thinking about the years of chasing leads and reaching dead ends to finally have the chance to share this breakthrough with Green and the rest of Hooper’s family.
"I know that she's very happy, and I feel it,” Green said. “I feel her all the time. I talk to her all the time. "
