Mississippi police armed with new evidence from witnesses ended a family’s nightmare as they busted a sick career criminal for the cold-case rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl found tied up in a creek in 1986.
Rubin Weeks, 63, was busted Tuesday in Madison County by a caravan of law-enforcement officers who surrounded his RV and charged him for the abduction and murder of Shondra May, local WLBT reported.
May, a senior at Leake Academy, vanished in February 1986 after she got off work from the McDonald’s on Highway 35, with someone kidnapping her just moments before she arrived home in Forest.
Her car was found abandoned on a gravel road leading to her driveway, with a three-week search ending in heartbreak on what would’ve been May’s 18th birthday.
A fisherman found her naked body, bound in tape and wrapped in garbage bags, at a creek in Hinds County, more than 60 miles away.
The case remained frozen in place when Scott County Sheriff Mike Lee was first elected to office in 2007, with the sheriff swearing to May’s brother, Tim, that justice would come under his watch.
“When Sheriff Mike Lee was elected, he made a promise to the people of Scott County and to our family that he was going to solve this murder,” Tim, who was 18 when his sister vanished, told WLBT.
“And he’s kept good on his promise. There has been a bunch of people who have helped him keep good on his promise,” he added.
Investigators said dogged police work allowed them to track down several witnesses who were able to corroborate and build a case against Weeks. It was not clear what new evidence were able to give that led to the bust.
The 63-year-old was a person of interest given his criminal history, with Weeks previously convicted for the 1991 kidnapping and rape of a motel clerk in Mississippi.
Like with May’s case, the clerk was found bound with tape, but the woman survived the horrifying ordeal and was able to testify against him, leading to a 1997 conviction.
The similarity in the cases prompted police to question Weeks at the time, but there was not enough evidence to charge him with a crime.
Weeks, who denied ever knowing May, has been charged with kidnapping, rape, and murder.
The sheriff’s office said Weeks could have his first court hearing as early as Thursday morning.
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