The Texas Department of Public Safety announced Aug. 28 that Texas Rangers and the Universal City Police Department have identified a suspect in a 1981 Bexar County sexual assault and murder, using modern forensic testing to close a case that had gone cold for more than four decades.
Kelly Lee Brower, 68, was arrested Aug. 19 in Cottonwood, Ariz., and will soon be extradited to Texas on capital murder charges, according to DPS. The department said the case illustrates how advances in DNA analysis are reopening investigations once considered exhausted.
On April 13, 1981, the nude body of 23-year-old Yolanda Herrera was discovered by children in a field near the 500 block of East Aviation Drive in Bexar County, DPS said. According to the department, she had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death after last being seen walking home from a local bar shortly after it closed a few days earlier. Investigators made extensive efforts to identify her killer in the years that followed, but DPS said all known suspects were eliminated and the case went cold for more than 40 years.
In late 2020, the case was identified as eligible for the DPS Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, a program funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance that provides investigative funding to help agencies resolve unsolved sexual assaults and sexually related homicides, the department said.
Under that program, Texas Rangers and Universal City police submitted evidence collected during the original autopsy for advanced DNA testing and genealogy research, according to DPS. In 2021, BODE Technologies conducted a surname search that produced a lead and extracted a small amount of DNA from critical evidence, though the department said the sample was too small for genealogy testing at the time.
In 2025, Othram Laboratories further analyzed the sample and applied forensic investigative genetic genealogy to identify a possible suspect, work that DPS said ultimately led investigators to Brower. Investigators traveled to Arizona to meet with him, and DPS said Brower confessed to Herrera’s killing after multiple interviews before being arrested. The charge against him has not been adjudicated, and the release did not indicate any conviction.
The Texas Rangers thanked partner agencies for what the department described as years of commitment to the case, including the Universal City Police Department, the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office, the Cottonwood Police Department in Arizona, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office SAKI Program, BODE Technologies, Othram Laboratories, the Bexar County Crime Laboratory and the DPS Crime Laboratory Division.