Debra Lee Miller, 18, was found murdered in her Ohio apartment on April 29, 1981. A decades-old cold case murder has been solved after the killer was fatally shot by police in a shootout at an Ohio motel last month. For 43 years, the murder of Debra Miller haunted the town of Mansfield. The 18-year-old waitress was found brutally beaten to death in her apartment on April 29, 1981. Her case remained a mystery, until now.
![[James Vanest, 68, died in a shootout with police]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/31/18/Screenshot-2024-12-31-at-1.31.44%E2%80%AFPM.jpg)
Police in Mansfield say Miller was killed by James Vanest, a 68-year-old suspect killed last month during a shootout with police in Stark County, who has now been linked through DNA analysis to Miller’s slaying. Vanest, who was 25 years old and living in the same apartment building as Miller at the time of the killing, had been questioned during the initial investigation but was never identified as a suspect.
![[Debra Miller, 18, was beaten to death inside her Ohio apartment in 1981]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/31/18/Screenshot-2024-12-31-at-1.31.32%E2%80%AFPM.jpg)
DNA evidence that was collected from the scene had been carefully preserved in storage for the past four decades. It showed the level of brutality and how hard Miller fought for her life, investigators said. “We were looking at things that the victim was bound up with. We were looking at bodily fluids, including the blood that was found there,” Richland County Assistant Prosecutor Chris Brown said during a press conference on Monday. “We also talked about what we perceived to be the murder weapons, which in this case were pots, pans and oven grates.”.
Vanest was interviewed again in 2021, where he admitted that he lied to investigators about the story he previously told them about chasing a homeless man away from Miller’s door on the night of her murder. He had claimed that she invited him inside and that she was fine when he left her building.
