The DNA of an Arizona man who died by suicide this year has connected him to the unsolved slaying of a Navy veteran whose body was dumped in a cemetery four decades ago, prosecutors said.
Orison James “Jim” Chafin was 54 when he was killed on Aug. 7, 1987, and investigators now believe the homicide was committed by Gary Wayne Billups, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement Tuesday.
Billups was 68 when he died by suicide on June 24, days after he submitted DNA to investigators, authorities said.
Chafin’s body was found at Resthaven Cemetery in Glendale with his throat cut, and he was wearing only socks, officials said.
Early Aug. 8, 1987, witnesses in a car driving through the cemetery spotted a parked midsize sedan, which then “fled across the dirt and sidewalk,” according to Mayes’ statement.
Chafin’s body was found near where the suspicious car had been parked.
Chafin had been drinking in the afternoon and evening at Critters Lounge, about 2 miles from where his body was found, on Aug. 7, prosecutors said.
Detectives collected beer bottles and cigarette butts from the bar and “testing produced three male DNA profiles,” which were then “entered into the national CODIS database,” Mayes said.
The case remained unsolved for decades before cold-case investigators from the AG’s office and Glendale police took a fresh look at Chafin’s murder last year, Mayes said.
New interviews with surviving witnesses led investigators to Billups, “who had lived in Glendale in 1987 but was never interviewed by police at the time,” according to Mayes.
A witness placed the victim and the suspect at the since-shuttered Critters Lounge, telling investigators that she remembered that “victim James also got into a fight with Gary over James verbally attacking a subject named Mark who was not there to defend himself,” she said.
Billups voluntarily spoke to police on June 19 and denied knowing Chafin and “denied living in Glendale in 1987, despite arrest records placing him in the city in 1986 and 1987,” Mayes said.
He provided a DNA sample, walked free that day and died by suicide five days later — all before “DNA results confirming the match were returned” on Aug. 6, state prosecutors said.
“Two other individuals investigated in connection with the case have also since died and could not be contacted further,” the statement said. “The Attorney General’s Office and the Glendale Police Department both consider this case closed.”
