WALKER COUNTY, Ga. — The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Saturday the solving of a 25-year-old cold case murder in Walker County.
According to a GBI release, agents at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation arrested 50-year-old Robert Allen Mowry on Friday and charged him with the December 1994 murder of 54-year-old James Richard Harris.
The GBI said it was initially involved in the 1994 investigation, in which Harris was found dead at the entrance of his property in Chickamauga.
He had been "murdered and robbed by the gate of his property as he was leaving for work," the bureau said.
"In 2009, investigators received information from Crime Stoppers about the murderer’s possible identity," the GBI said. "The GBI, Walker County Sheriff’s Office, and the Chattanooga Police Department pursued additional leads which brought the case closer to a resolution; however, there was not enough evidence to make an arrest."
The bureau added that authorities "developed new evidence following surveillances and interviews" conducted this year.
The GBI said the interstate case is being turned over to the Walker County District Attorney's Office for prosecution.
Chattanooga NBC station WRCB spoke to Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson in 2014 about the case.
He told them at that time, which marked two decades since Harris' murder, that he had a regular routine of leaving for work at 5:15 to 5:30 every morning, and, as the station put it, "was known to carry a large amount of cash."
The morning of his murder, Harris was ambushed at the gate to his property, in what authorities believed was a robbery.
"Harris may have put up a struggle. His revolver was recovered at the scene. It had been fired twice, but investigators were unable to determine when," WRCB reported in 2014.
At that time, the sheriff believed that they had enough DNA evidence to pinpoint a person if they could narrow a suspect.
"The unknown for victims of homicide, murder victim families, they tell me, is very difficult to deal with," he said.
According to the GBI, that unknown has now been settled, at least in this case.
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