She was left strangled outside. 46 years later, police I.D. her killer.

More than 45 years ago, Kathryn Donohue, a 31-year-old union secretary, went out for dinner in Georgetown with co-workers after work. It was the last night she would be seen alive, according to authorities and charging documents.

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Early the next morning, on March 3, 1979, a person found her body in a parking lot in Glenarden, Maryland, miles away from where she lived in Arlington, Virginia. She had been violently raped and strangled, police said in charging documents.

Police were unable to find the cabdriver who was paid to take Donohue home and the killer’s identity remained a mystery.

But DNA that had been retested over the years finally yielded a clue late last year thanks to advances in technology that allow police to essentially comb through family trees in the search for justice.

Investigators were able to identify a relative of the man who allegedly raped and killed Donohue. The evidence pointed them toward 82-year-old Rodger Zodas Brown of Pinehurst, North Carolina, police said in the charging documents. They took a plastic fork from the trash can outside his home and tested the DNA, then knocked on his door and arrested him after it matched a sample taken from Donahue’s slip.

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“This case serves as a reminder that we will never give up seeking the truth, no matter how much time has passed,” Prince George’s County police Chief Malik Aziz said at a news conference announcing Brown’s arrest Tuesday.

In 2020, Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy’s office applied for and received a federal grant for forensic genetic genealogy testing, Braveboy said.

It’s the same technology that helped police arrest the Golden State Killer in 2018 after linking crime scene DNA to multiple cousins of his, and more recently, in the Maryland killing of Rachel Morin.

Police can trace the path to a suspect through crime scene DNA and the genealogy of their relatives.

Using publicly accessible genealogy databases for information, investigators build out a family tree and “narrow down people who could potentially be the suspect based on their genetic relationship,” said Bill DelBagno, special agent in charge of the FBI Baltimore Field Office.

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“DNA is collected from crime scenes … that DNA is created into a profile,” DelBagno said. “That profile is built to identify family and family members, and then, in identifying those family members, identifying those that would fit the right age, year group, location, to identify the potential suspects.”

Such testing made the recent arrest in Donohue’s case possible, DelBagno said.

At this time, there is no known connection between Brown and Donohue, Aziz said. At the time of the killing in 1979, Brown lived in Hyattsville in Prince George’s County. Back then the county had just over 650,000 residents. Now it’s closer to a million.

Brown was arrested at his North Carolina home last week, with the help of the Moore County Sheriff’s Office and FBI Charlotte Field Office, police said.

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First Sgt. Gregory McDonald, who leads the Prince George’s County cold case unit, said Brown was “cold” and had “no reaction” when police came to arrest and charge him with Donohue’s murder.

Brown was arrested in 1967 and served an 11-year sentence for armed robbery in Nassau County, New York, before being released in June 1978, McDonald said.

Brown moved to North Carolina in 2017, McDonald said.

He has been charged with first-degree murder, rape and related counts in Donohue’s killing. Brown is in North Carolina awaiting extradition to Prince George’s County. He faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole, said Braveboy, who recently won the Democratic nomination in the special election to become Prince George’s County executive.

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It was not immediately clear whether Brown has an attorney.

Braveboy said justice for Donohue is only the beginning using genetic genealogy testing.

“We believe that as we go into the future, we may be able to resolve more cases using this very important technology,” Braveboy said.

Robert Dean, a prosecutor on the Donohue case, began working with Sgt. McDonald to pursue investigative genealogy by getting approval from a judge, which is required by law to conduct the testing in Maryland. It took 38 months to build the family tree, retest the evidence that was collected in 1979 and put the case together alongside the FBI and local law enforcement.

Although cases this old often result in a lack of witnesses, so far in this case, Dean said, they have been able to locate “essential witnesses.”

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“It’s just a matter of being patient, utilizing what technology is there to give us, and I think that speaks well for what both the state’s attorney’s office and the police department have done, again with the training and help of the FBI,” Dean said.

Described by her family as an “outgoing young lady,” Donohue was affectionately known as “Kathy,” authorities said.

She was from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and moved to the Washington, D.C., area for work, McDonald said. She never married and had no children but is survived by a brother and sister.

In a statement, Donohue’s family thanked everyone involved in the investigation, especially the county police department.

“We will always be grateful for their determination, their compassion, and their relentless pursuit of the truth which has finally given us a sense of closure that we never thought possible after all this time,” they said.

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