Unraveling a 40‑Year‑Old Crime with DNA

A life‑sentence inmate now faces a new capital murder charge after DNA testing linked him to a Dallas homicide that happened in 1986.

The victim, Ruby Battee, was sexually assaulted and killed after a stranger forced his way into her home. Back then, investigators could only recover a small amount of DNA from her clothes, but the technology of the 1980s could not turn it into a usable profile.

Fast forward to early 2025: Dallas detectives sent the untouched evidence—including a swab from a rape kit and items found at the scene—to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification. By mid‑April 2026, a partial male DNA profile had been created and entered into CODIS, the national database.

Within weeks, a match pointed to Marvin Lee Holloway. He had already been in prison since 1988 for killing a coworker and was serving life for that crime. Police obtained a fresh DNA sample from him in May 2026 while he was at a Texas Department of Criminal Justice facility, then questioned him about the Battee case.

The new evidence was enough for detectives to secure a murder warrant against Holloway, adding the 1986 case to his list of convictions.

Police officials praised their detectives’ persistence, noting that even decades after a crime, justice can still be pursued through modern science.