Austin police identify suspect in 40-year-old unsolved murder case

AUSTIN, Texas (KWTX) – Austin police say they have identified a suspect in the unsolved 1980 murder of Susan Leigh Wolfe.

Authorities identified 78-year-old Deck Brewer Jr. as a suspect in the case.

On January 9, 1980, 25-year-old Wolfe enrolled in the nursing school at the University of Texas at Austin.

At around 10 p.m. that day, police say Wolfe was abducted a block from her home as she was on her way to her friend's house after spraying her house for bugs.

According to police, a witness who observed the kidnapping described a car stopping, the driver getting out of the vehicle, grabbing Wolfe in a “bear hug,” pulling a coat over her head and dragging her into the car.

According to police, the witness also described seeing the passenger door of the vehicle open, but did not see what the passenger did during the kidnapping.

The vehicle was described by the witness as a 1970 Dodge Polara.

Wolfe's body was found the next morning in an alley at 2000 East 17th Street.

According to police, a pathologist saw signs of strangulation by a strangulator, determined the cause of death to be a gunshot wound to the head, classified the manner of death as a homicide and found evidence of sexual abuse.

In the first year of the investigation, the police said they were able to locate 40 suspects and question at least six suspects, some of them as far away as New York.

On April 27, 2023, detectives from the Austin Police Department's Cold Case Unit submitted evidence related to the sexual assault of Wolfe to the Texas DPS Crime Lab that was deemed suitable for investigation.

On February 12, 2024, police said they received test results showing a male Short Tandem Repeat (STR), eliminating six of the known suspects.

The Texas DPS entered the STR profile into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a computer program that maintains local, state and national databases of DNA profiles of convicted felons, unsolved crime scenes and missing persons.

On March 11, 2024, the Austin Police Department was notified by the Texas DPS that a possible match had been found in the CODIS system in Massachusetts.

Investigators reviewed a report from Massachusetts authorities dated March 7, 2024, identifying Brewer as a possible author of the STR profile developed by the Texas DPS.

According to recent arrest records, Brewer was incarcerated in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections on other charges.

On June 10, 2024, the Travis County District Attorney found sufficient probable cause to issue a DNA search warrant to obtain a DNA sample from Brewer and compare it to evidence found during Wolfe's autopsy.

On July 13, 2024, Austin Police Department, Massachusetts, executed a DNA search warrant to obtain Brewer's DNA sample and conducted an interview with him.

During questioning, police say Brewer told them he was in Austin and San Antonio at the time of the murder. Police say he invoked his right to an attorney after being told his DNA was found at the scene of a murder.

On July 23, 2024, police received the results of a comparison of Brewer's DNA and the DNA found during Wolfe's autopsy.

The Texas DPS report states that Brewer “cannot be excluded as the author of the partial principal component of this DNA profile. The probability of randomly selecting an unrelated person who could be the author of the partial principal component of this DNA profile is approximately 1 in 550.5 trillion. There are 18 zeros following a trillion.”

On August 14, 2024, the Austin Municipal Court found that there was sufficient probable cause to issue an arrest warrant for Brewer for the murder of Wolfe.

Austin police said the investigation is ongoing and authorities are working to identify the passenger who was in the vehicle at the time of Wolfe's abduction.

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call the Austin Police Department Cold Case Unit at 512-974-5250.

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