A tip led police to arrest a man living in suburban Atlanta on a murder charge in the 1991 death of former girlfriend in North Carolina.
U.S. marshals arrested Rodney Cooke Tuesday after getting a tip he was living in Alpharetta, Georgia, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported Friday.
Police say he shot and killed Adrian Sauls 24 years ago in Wilson, N.C., when they were living together.
Police initially arrested another man for the crime. He was released when it turned out he was the wrong man. Later police obtained an arrest warrants for Cooke in connection with the killing.
Wilson police said Cooke used aliases and had a criminal record under some fake names, making it hard to track him down.
The warrant hadn’t been listed in a law-enforcement computer system, WSB-TV reported.
“For whatever reason that warrant was never in the system, so for 24 years, the individual responsible has been on the run, has been living in society,” Alpharetta Department of Public Safety Spokesman George Gordon told the station.
A friend of the victim told the station Sauls was a happy person.
“She was a lovable person,” Chenita Pigford said. “She was the type of person that if you was down, you can go around her and easily you’d get get happy.”
Cooke won’t fight extradition back to North Carolina.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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