A man has been arrested in connection with the murder of teenage girl from North Carolina who was murdered almost forty years ago after police used new DNA techniques to tie him to the crime.
Robert James Adkins, 62, of Dobson, near Greensboro, North Carolina, was arrested on Friday and charged with first-degree murder and first-degree forcible rape of 14-year-old Ronda Blaylock.
Blaylock disappeared in August 1980 after she had gone to a local bowling alley with her friend.
Ronda Blaylock was just 14 years old in August 1980 when she was found stabbed to death and brutally assaulted
Sixty-two-year-old Robert Adkins of Dobson was arrested on Friday without incident and charged with her murder after a nearly 40-year investigation among the Surry County Police
The pair had been walking home from the bowling alley in Rural Hall, North Carolina, when they were offered a ride from a man they didn’t know, according to The Mount Airy News.
After getting in the car, Blaylock’s friend was dropped off completely unharmed, but Blaylock herself, never made it back home.
She was reported missing by her parents the same night and three days later her body was found in woods around 18 miles from where she was last seen.
Her partially clothed body showed signs she had been violently assaulted before being stabbed to death according to the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
Investigators came up with these photo-fits in the 1980s for the man they were after
However, leads went cold until very recently when the Surry County Sheriff’s Office took another look at the case.
Both current and retired agents and officers came back to work on the case.
The Ronda Blaylock Homicide Task Force was formed in 2015 to ‘investigate new leads in the case’ and test DNA evidence using techniques that didn’t exist in 1980.
The investigation into Blaylock’s death was relaunched after her mother, Rebecca, called in to authorities to ask what progress had been made on her daughter’s case.
Former Surry County Sheriff Graham Atkinson told WXII that many interviews were re-conducted and evidence was reexamined.
Ninth grader Ronda Blaylock (above) had taken a ride home from a man after going to a bowling alley
‘There were people who were moved to other parts of the country who were contacted who were re-interviewed and after each one of those interviews, the task force would come together, look at everything that had been developed and then decide the next step but it was a painstaking process and lots of blood, sweat and tears, lots of hours, lots of effort went into this,’ Atkinson said.
While decades had passed since the murder, some witnesses were been able to provide better information now than they could at the time the tragedy occurred.
‘This is because they were young when this murder occurred and they feared getting into trouble with their parents or the law; they are no longer close with those who, in confidence, has discussed the homicide with them,’ explained Sheriff Atkinson.
The witnesses also did not realize Ronda’s murder was still an open case.
The Ronda Blaylock Homicide Task Force was formed in 2015 to ‘investigate new leads in the case’ and test DNA evidence using techniques that didn’t exist in 1980
Unfortunately, Blaylock’s mother passed away last year and so is unable to share in the promising news that a suspect has been arrested.
In a video provided by authorities in 2015, Rebecca Blaylock said she wanted whoever responsible for her daughter’s death to spend the rest of their life in prison.
‘I’ve been in prison, so to speak, for 35 years,’ she said in the video. ‘I want them to know how it feels not to have your freedom, you know.’
She said her daughter never had the chance to graduate from high school and college, get married or have children.
‘People ask me, ‘How many grandchildren do you have,” she said. ‘and I say, ‘I don’t have any grandchildren because I don’t have any children.”
‘You would think that after this much time and this much effort that the reaction would be elation but my first thought went back to going to visit Ronda’s mother when we first reopened this investigation and sitting in her living room, kneeling and praying with her and my first thought was I just wish Ms. Blaylock was still here to see this,’ Sheriff Atkinson said.
‘I do feel some relief. I also try to keep that very guarded because this is just the first step. This suspect has been identified for a while now that the arrest has been made but now we have to get through the prosecution so once that’s done, he’s found guilty and he receives his sentence, that’s when I’ll breathe a sigh of relief,’ he continued.
Jeff Shouse, a cousin of the Blaylock’s said the case had been on the minds of family members many times over the last four decades.
‘We would think about it, not constantly obviously, but from time to time and say, ‘I wonder if that person who did that, they can be walking among you and you never even know it and you hope that some day some kind of lead would develop and they would be able to make an arrest which thankfully has been the case,’ Shouse said to WXII.
‘I hope this will carry over and get he’ll convicted and he’ll spend the rest of his days behind bars,’ said Shouse.
‘Why? That’s the biggest question that I have. Why? Why did you do this to an innocent 14-year-old?’ said Vicky Thomas, Ronda’s aunt.
‘Healing is never easy. It’s a long term thing and it can always be reopened and Friday is what that did. Even though the man has been arrested it still just opens everything back up.’
Adkins, meanwhile, remains in custody and has not yet appointed a lawyer.