File Photo

Angela M. Samota

A man charged Monday in the brutal 1984 murder of a Southern Methodist University coed was on parole for rape and kidnapping at the time of the killing and was rearrested less than a year later for another rape, according to state records.

Donald Andrew Bess, 59, committed his other crimes in the Houston area and was not on Dallas police investigators' radar in the killing of Angela Samota, 20, until this last year.

Preserved DNA evidence from the crime scene was matched to Mr. Bess through a national database, police said.

"He totally was not on our screen," said retired homicide Detective P.E. Jones, one of the original investigators in the case. "If his name had popped up, I can guarantee you we would have looked at it.

Mr. Bess is serving a life sentence at a state prison in Huntsville. He now faces a capital murder charge in Ms. Samota’s death.

Miss Samota was found sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in her Dallas condominium off University Boulevard, east of Central Expressway, early one morning in October 1984 following a night out with friends.

The junior computer science and electrical engineering major had called her boyfriend shortly before she was found dead and said there was a man in her condo asking to use the phone and bathroom. There was no urgency in her voice, the boyfriend told investigators.

Detectives initially questioned those close to her, including former boyfriends. But within weeks Dallas police concluded Miss Samota, who attended Hockaday School, probably had not known her killer.

It is still unclear why Mr. Bess was in the Dallas area at the time. Police plan to answer questions about the case at a news conference this afternoon.

According to Houston media reports, Mr. Bess, a 350-pound pipefitter, was sentenced to life in prison for raping a Salvadoran housewife and mother of five June 14, 1985, eight months after Miss Samota was killed.

In that case, the 38-year-old victim said Mr. Bess stopped his truck near a bus stop and offered her a ride, according to an article in The Houston Chronicle. She accepted because she was in a hurry for a job interview, the story said.

Prosecutors said Mr. Bess took the woman to an apartment and raped her.

Miss Samota's family declined to comment Monday. Her Zeta Tau Alpha sorority sisters expressed mixed emotions.

"Actually seeing his face really was bittersweet," said Evelyn Sandy of University Park. "It's such a relief that someone has been caught, but you know to actually see the identity of the perpetrator is pretty scary. It makes it very real."

"Back then we would have given anything to know who it was," said Joy Hosey of Rockwall. "Today it's just so sad; it doesn't really make a difference to me anymore.

"I got to have a career, I got to have a family, I got to have children. Angie never got to have any of that. She was deserving of a great life."

This is the first solved case for the recently re-formed Dallas police homicide cold case squad. Lead Detective Linda Crum worked along with Detective Ken Penrod under supervisor Sgt. Larry Lewis.

For Detective Jones, one of the first investigators involved in the case, Miss Samota's murder always stuck with him.

"The reason I remember it is because it's not just innocence lost – the young girl pretty much in her prime. She wasn't a bad girl; she was a decent girl," Detective Jones said.

"So many of these cases, the people that get out there and get themselves killed are putting themselves in a position to do it. Here she is in her home. She's trying to do the right things and trying to live life."