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Letter to the editor

Arrest made in 1976 murder

The 85-year-old victim had been raped and stabbed.

By ABHI RAGHUNTHAN
Published July 18, 2007

"He had no idea why we were there," Sgt. Mike Kovacsev, head of the homicide unit, said as he stood behind a scrapbook with old newspaper clippings of the murder. "He really hadn't thought about it in 30 years. His past came back to haunt him."
	[Times photo: Cherie Diez]

ADVERTISEMENT [Handout] Ester Harvey Greene, 67, who was murdered in Jordan Park around the same time Mary Barth, 85, was killed 30 years ago. St. Petersburg Police think the murders may be related. Alfonzo Austin, 58, who was never a suspect in the murder, admitted killing Barth and faces a charge of first-degree murder.

ST. PETERSBURG - For more than 30 years, the gruesome murder of Mary Jane Barth remained unsolved, one of the department's oldest open cases.

She was an 85-year-old retiree who had grown senile and often wandered away from home. On Sept. 17, 1976, police found her facedown inside Greenwood Cemetery. She had been raped and stabbed 27 times.

Police worked overtime following leads. But the trail went cold.

Then, last year, investigator Brenda Stevenson submitted DNA evidence to the state's crime lab, something police do regularly with cold cases in the hope of getting a break.

And they did. Last month, police got word that the DNA from semen on a small piece of Barth's clothing matched a profile in an FBI database: Alfonzo Austin, 58, a convicted sex offender who was living in an apartment just outside Quincy in the Panhandle.

He was surprised when officers showed up to arrest him.

"He had no idea why we were there," Sgt. Mike Kovacsev, head of the homicide unit, said Tuesday, as he stood behind a scrapbook with old newspaper clippings of the murder. "He really hadn't thought about it in 30 years. His past came back to haunt him."

Austin, who was never a suspect in the murder, admitted killing Barth, Kovacsev said, and faces a charge of first-degree murder. Austin also made some comments that could link him to another unsolved murder that took place just four months before Barth's killing.

Police say they are investigating whether he is responsible for the attempted rape and stabbing of Ester Greene, a 67-year-old woman who was found in the Jordan Park housing complex where she lived. Police have submitted DNA evidence, but it has not been processed yet by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Austin lived just across the street from Greenwood Cemetery in 1976. He did various odd jobs, including working as a day laborer. He told police that he liked to go drink in the cemetery, at 11th Avenue S and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street.

He also has a lengthy criminal record that includes several sexual assaults.

Just a month after Barth's death, he was arrested for burglary and sentenced to one year. On the day he was released, Austin tried to rape another woman, police said. He got a six-month sentence and spent 4 1/2 years on probation for that attack.

He moved to Gadsden County in the Panhandle. Then, in 1990, he was convicted of a felony lewd and lascivious charge involving his stepdaughter, who was younger than 16.

That's when Austin's DNA sample was entered into the FBI's DNA database. And it was that sample that matched the DNA submitted by St. Petersburg police.

Beth Ordeman, a crime lab analyst with the FDLE, said she was very excited after learning about the hit. Recent advances in DNA technology have made it possible to obtain DNA profiles from even minute samples.

The technology used to identify Austin is called short tandem repeat, or STR. It is considered the most powerful type of DNA analysis, and works by comparing replicated genetic markers in DNA samples to those within profiles in the database.

Despite his string of arrests, Austin spent the last few years living just outside Gadsden with a retiree who was on Social Security, Kovacsev said. He said Austin was very nervous while talking about the crime.

Mary Barth was born in 1890, and moved to St. Petersburg with her sister around 1951 after running a guest home in Cleveland that catered to families of patients at the Cleveland Clinic.

In newspaper clippings about the brutal murder, neighbors described her as friendly.

Alice Barth was 78 years old in 1976, and died before Austin was arrested. But after her sister's death, she told a St. Petersburg Times reporter: "I hope they get that man off the streets, the one who killed Mary."

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report. Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or 727 893-8472.

[Last modified July 17, 2007, 23:39:42]