Atlanta detectives believe they have found the man responsible for the 1995 cold case rape and murder of Nacole Smith and a 2004 East Point sexual assault.
The suspect, 49-year-old Kevin Arnold, passed away late this summer of liver and kidney failure while in hospice care in Aug. 2021 in Fulton County. Unfortunately, he was never charged or arrested for the crimes he’s accused of, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.
Smith was 14-years-old at the time of her death. She was raped and shot in northeast Atlanta, and now the Atlanta Police Department has linked DNA from her murder case to a 2004 sexual assault in East Point.
Investigators then used genealogy and ancestral databases to help identify the suspect this year.
Smith’s mother says knowing her daughter’s suspected murderer is dead is bittersweet.
“I never imagined this person would be deceased, so many unanswered questions I had for him that I can never ask and get answers, but I would never say it was closure for me because I will live for this pain for the rest of my life,” she said.
Investigators worked tirelessly for 25 years to solve the homicide, and now that work has paid off.
Nacole Smith was walking to school on June 7, 1995, but went back home to get an assignment that she forgot by cutting through a wooded area. That is when she was attacked.
Retired Atlanta homicide detective Vince Velasquez re-opened the case in 2002. Smith had been assaulted, raped, and shot twice in the face. Her body was found on Childress Drive.
It took nine years following the murder of Smith for police to find any further leads in her case. In 2004, police were informed that a forensic match was found in DNA for the East Point assault investigation.
“That means Nacole’s killer was back,” Velazquez said.
There was one problem, the suspect was not identified, so the case was passed on to Detective Scott Demeester.
Demeester said nationally-covered cases played a factor in finding a method of identifying Nacole Smith’s killer through genealogy. The process took about three years. Demeester said the GBI forensics lab eventually told police that their person of interest matched the DNA profile in the 1995 murder and 2004 rape.
“I would not have been able to do what I did without a lot of help from a lot of people,” Demeester said. “I was just glad to be able to make that phone call to Mrs. Smith.”
Police have no evidence linking Arnold to other crimes.
At the time of Nacole Smith’s murder, Arnold was 23 years old and either 31 or 32 years old at the time of the East Point sexual assault.
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