A transient living in Iowa was booked into the Broward County Jail this week after admitting he killed a 70-year-old Wilton Manors man more than 14 years ago.
Richard Busey was killed in his apartment on April 4, 2002, investigators said.
His murder went unsolved until Aug. 11 when deputies say Joshua Odom, 38, walked into a police station in Des Moines and admitted to killing the elderly man.
“Fortunately, Detective David Turner, of Wilton Manors, saw the needle in the haystack,” a BCSO release said. “His memory jogged, he reviewed the 14-year-old case files and saw that Odom’s utterances aligned with the details of the 70-year-old’s death.”
Odom was arrested in Iowa on Aug. 25 and was interviewed by a Broward County Sheriff's Office homicide detective the next day, officials said.
He was taken into custody by Broward County deputies on Sept. 7.
Odom faces charges of theft and first degree murder.
Odom told investigators he’d gone to Busey’s apartment for drinks and sex, but once inside he decided to kill and rob the man to get money to buy drugs, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said.
Officials in Iowa sent a bulletin about the killing to law enforcement agencies in South Florida, but it was initially overlooked among the dozens of other alerts received by detectives every day, the BCSO said.
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