Arizona prosecutors say a DNA match has finally identified the suspect in the nearly four-decade-old murder of a Navy veteran found with his throat cut in a Glendale cemetery, but the man took his own life before the results came back.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced this week that Gary Wayne Billups, who died by suicide on June 24 at age 68, has been linked through DNA evidence to the August 1987 killing of Orison James "Jim" Chafin, a 54-year-old Navy veteran. Chafin's body was discovered at Resthaven Cemetery in Glendale, Arizona, his throat cut, after he spent the evening drinking at a bar roughly two miles away. The case sat unsolved for nearly 40 years.
Cold-case investigators from the Attorney General's Office and the Glendale Police Department reopened the file last year, conducted fresh interviews with surviving witnesses, and zeroed in on Billups, a man who had lived in Glendale in 1987 but was never questioned by police at the time. Five days after he sat down voluntarily with investigators and gave a DNA sample, Billups was dead. Both agencies now consider the case closed.
On the afternoon and evening of August 7, 1987, Chafin was drinking at Critters Lounge, a since-shuttered Glendale bar about two miles from Resthaven Cemetery. A witness account relayed in the AG's office statement described an altercation that night: Chafin "got into a fight with Gary over James verbally attacking a subject named Mark who was not there to defend himself."
Hours later, in the early morning of August 8, witnesses driving through Resthaven Cemetery spotted a parked midsized sedan. The car "fled across the dirt and sidewalk," the AG's office stated. Chafin's body was found near where the vehicle had been parked. His throat had been cut.
The original investigation stalled. No arrest was made. For roughly four decades, the killing of a Navy veteran went unanswered.
When cold-case investigators reopened the file last year, they started with the physical evidence. Beer bottles and cigarette butts collected from Critters Lounge produced three male DNA profiles, which were entered into the FBI's national Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, the federal database that stores and cross-references DNA profiles from criminal cases across the country. NBC News reported that new interviews with surviving witnesses pointed investigators toward Billups, who had never been contacted during the original probe.
On June 19, Billups voluntarily spoke with police. He denied knowing Chafin. He denied living in Glendale in 1987, despite arrest records placing him in the city in both 1986 and 1987, the AG's office stated. He provided a DNA sample that same day and walked free.
Five days later, on June 24, Billups died by suicide. He never saw the results.
On August 6, DNA results confirming the match between Billups and the evidence in the Chafin case were returned to investigators. The gap between the interview and the lab confirmation meant Billups could not be arrested or charged.
The contradiction at the center of Billups's June 19 interview is stark. He told investigators he had not lived in Glendale in 1987. Arrest records from 1986 and 1987 placed him squarely in the city during the period of Chafin's murder. A witness account put both men at Critters Lounge the night Chafin died and described a physical confrontation between them.
The AG's office also noted that two other individuals investigated in connection with the case have since died and "could not be contacted further." No additional details about those individuals were released.
Mayes's office and the Glendale Police Department jointly declared the case closed. "The Attorney General's Office and the Glendale Police Department both consider this case closed," the official statement read.
Jim Chafin served in the Navy. He was 54 years old when someone cut his throat and left his body in a cemetery. For 39 years, no one was held accountable. The DNA technology that eventually identified his suspected killer did not exist when he died. The witness interviews that pointed to Billups could have happened decades earlier, Billups lived in Glendale at the time and had arrest records in the city, yet police never spoke to him.
Cold-case units exist precisely for failures like this one. The reinvestigation produced a DNA match and a name. It did not produce a trial, a conviction, or a sentence. Billups's suicide five days after his interview foreclosed any possibility of courtroom accountability.
The case file is closed. Whether justice was served is a different question, and the one person who could have answered for Jim Chafin made sure he never would.
