From the archives: This story was originally published 2/4/2007.

FAIR PLAY, Mo. -- Dewey Rumfelt waited nearly three decades to know who killed his kid sister in St. Louis County, so he couldn't help repeating Saturday that one joyous statistic from a detective who helped crack the case.

Police got a DNA match, the detective called to say. And the chance of that DNA link being wrong is 1 in 5 trillion, the detective said.

"I was shocked, " said Rumfelt, a train conductor living in this southwestern Missouri town north of Springfield. "And with a match like that, I was sold."

After 30 years of frustrating dead-ends, police on Friday could finally give Rumfelt the name of the alleged killer: Gregory Bowman.

Bowman, 55, was charged in St. Louis County on Friday with capital murder in the 1977 killing of 16-year-old Velda Joy Rumfelt, a Brentwood schoolgirl.

Bowman had never been a suspect in Velda Rumfelt's murder until Tuesday. That's when the DNA match to semen found in Rumfelt's clothing came in. Bowman was freed just nine days ago from the St. Clair County Jail after two murder convictions in Illinois were overturned. He is awaiting new trials in those two cases.

Bowman would have been 25 at the time of Rumfelt's death. A stranger to her, police theorize, Bowman picked her up along a busy stretch of Brentwood Boulevard in his 1977 Grand Prix auto, slashed her throat, strangled her and dumped her body in a remote area.

"All of the details, I'm not interested in hearing in a courtroom setting, " said Dewey Rumfelt, 47. "What I want to know is, when are we frying him? I'll be there."

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch will decide later whether to seek the death penalty, which in Missouri is carried out by lethal injection.

Bowman on Saturday was being held without bail in the Wabash County Jail in Mount Carmel, Ill., awaiting extradition to Missouri.

THE CRIME

Velda Rumfelt was last seen walking barefoot on June 5, 1977, near the intersection of Brentwood Boulevard and Clayton Road. It was the summer before her junior year at Brentwood High School. She'd just spent time at Six Flags and still carried a balloon tied to her wrist.

Rumfelt, a carefree girl, petite and blond who excelled in gymnastics, had just jumped out of a friend's car, leaving her shoes and purse behind. She told the friend that someone else would take her home. She stopped to talk with waiters on a restaurant parking lot.

The next day, her body was found in a field off of Allenton Road, near Manchester Road, in southwest St. Louis County. She'd been sexually assaulted and strangled. A shoestring cord was wrapped around her neck; and a bra stuffed in her mouth, according to court documents.

Dewey Rumfelt still shudders at it all. He and his sister were a year apart and very close. Their parents divorced when Velda was just 2. They were living in Brentwood with their stepmother while their father served prison time for attempted robbery. They spent their summer in Kansas City with their mother.

After hearing little from police for the last 15 years or so, Dewey Rumfelt said he nearly lost hope until he learned more about the powers of DNA through television programs. He figured if anything could solve the case, it would be that.

On Saturday, inside the home of Dewey and Teresa Rumfelt, the portable phone rang nonstop as family and friends called to talk about the good news. Velda's artwork hung in a gold picture frame in the living room. Next to it is a portrait of Velda.

Theresa Rumfelt was one of Velda Rumfelt's best friends. She and Dewey never forgot Velda, making sure to keep her memory alive for their three children by talking about Velda's silly antics, her love for drawing and the way she laughed.

Their oldest son, James Rumfelt, 26, who is an Air Force staff sergeant, took the lead in championing the case, even though he'd never met his aunt. He tried to get cold-crime reality shows interested. He called police in Clayton and exchanged e-mails with a private detective from Connecticut.

"I'd always heard about it my whole life, and it bothered me as I got older that it had gone on for so long, " James Rumfelt said in a phone interview from Shaw Air Force base in South Carolina. "I'd get more and more annoyed."

His dad thinks James' persistence paid off. "I think police were going to let it lay dormant, but James opened the case up, " Dewey Rumfelt said.

DNA MATCH

Bowman was freed on Jan. 26 from jail in St. Clair County after posting $15,020 bond. In April 2001, a St. Clair County judge threw out his convictions in the murders of Elizabeth West, 14, and Ruth Ann Jany, 21, and ordered new trials. Bowman has been awaiting those retrials.

The convictions were thrown out because a sheriff's deputy admitted to Post-Dispatch reporters that he had tricked Bowman into talking about the murders to a career criminal inside the jail.

On Monday, Jim Rokita of the Belleville Police Department called Joe Burgoon, who works with the cold-case unit of the St. Louis County Police Department. Rokita, the original case agent in the Bowman investigation from 1978, wanted to know if Burgoon knew of any unsolved murders from the 1970s that they could check Bowman's DNA against.

Burgoon mentioned Velda Rumfelt's murder. Like Rumfelt, both West and Jany had been strangled and dumped in remote areas. Rokita sent Bowman's DNA sample along to lab technicians in Clayton. They compared it with semen found in Rumfelt's clothing, according to court documents.

"The DNA came back, and bingo!" said Burgoon, a seasoned detective who spent 27 years of his 43-year career investigating homicides in St. Louis. Burgoon said Rumfelt's case is the oldest such cold case in St. Louis County in which DNA evidence is available.

St. Clair County prosecutor Bob Haida said Saturday that good police work broke this case.

"I'd call it good intuition, " Haida said. "Joe Burgoon matched up with Jim Rokita is a good team."

Bowman had voluntarily submitted his DNA in 2001 to try to clear his name in the West and Jany murders. Since he'd been locked up since the late 1970s, his DNA was not in the national FBI database.

Bowman's lawyers on Saturday called the timing of the St. Louis County murder charges "suspect."

"I find it extremely coincidental that within days of posting bond that his name came up" in the St. Louis County murder, said Steve Evans, a lawyer for Bowman.

"Greg volunteered his DNA without hesitation to clear himself in two other murders, " Evans said. "It makes no sense at all that he would do that if he killed someone else."

Evans plans to be at the St. Louis County Courthouse as soon as it opens Monday to see what kind of case they have against Bowman.

Meanwhile, for Velda Rumfelt's family, Saturday was a day to celebrate.

At a cemetery in south St. Louis County, which Dewey and Teresa Rumfelt visit at least once a year to lay flowers and clean off the headstone, another relative from St. Charles County stopped by Saturday in their absence.

Darrell Day of St. Charles County, one of Teresa's relatives, stopped by Velda Rumfelt's grave carrying red roses and delicate pink spring flowers. He considered the murder charge against Bowman to be a victory, something worth marking with a fresh bouquet.

"Maybe some sort of justice can be done finally, " Day said. "There's nothing else I can do for the lady. Maybe now she can rest in peace."

kbell@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8115