Coke can helps police solve 40-year-old murder mystery, leads to arrest

Sylvia Quayle was 34 when she was murdered in August 1981. David Anderson in 1980. Photos / Cherry Hills Village Police Department

DNA from a Vanilla Coke can has led Colorado police to crack a brutal murder which has remained a mystery for 40 years.

62-year-old David Dwayne Anderson has been arrested by police.

He is accused of breaking into the Colorado home of Sylvia Quayle, 34, and sexually assaulting, strangling and stabbing her to death in 1981.

"It's been a journey, and then getting to know Jo, and understanding, being a little sister and what Sylvia meant to her, it's been a little breathtaking," Cherry Hills Village Police Chief Michelle Tovrea told local media.

"Sylvia's sister and family had the quote 'beauty seen is never lost' etched onto her grave marker a very fitting reminder of the beautiful person she was."

David Dwayne Anderson. Photo / Dawson County Sheriff's Office

At the time, DNA did not turn up a suspect. However, last year investigators working with police used new genealogical sleuthing techniques and DNA databases to come up with a name and address.

Fifteen bags of Anderson's rubbish was collected including a Vanilla Coke, a beer bottle, a rum bottle, and a water bottle.

Police believe the intruder broke into Quayle's home late on August 3 or in the early hours of August 4, 1981.

Her phone line had been cut and the screen to a bathroom window was removed and found 22 metres from her home.

Outside the home, police found several items they believe were from her bathroom.

Quayle spoke to her younger sister around 11pm and was found dead inside her home by her father before 8am the following day.

She was found naked in the living room.

"She loved her little sister very much," Quayle's sister Tovrea said.

"She had a wonderful loving relationship with her parents and had coffee with them every morning. They missed her deeply."