FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury has started deliberating in the trial of a 45-year-old man accused of fatally stabbing his friend when they were teenagers because she refused his romantic advances.
Ryland Shane Absalon faces up to life in prison if convicted of capital murder in Ginger Hayden's 1984 death. She was stabbed more than 50 times.
Absalon was arrested in 2010 at his home in Sierra Vista, Ariz. A Fort Worth police cold-case unit tested evidence and it matched his DNA.
During closing arguments, prosecutors said Absalon's 1986 confession when he was in a drug treatment program included details that only the killer knew.
But defense attorneys say Absalon falsely confessed because he was pressured at the center. They say DNA under Hayden's fingernails and a quilt matched an unknown man.
