A D.C. man has been convicted of first-degree murder and rape in the killing of a Maryland woman that had gone unsolved for more than 40 years before advancements in DNA helped crack the case.
Following a nine-day trial in Charles County, Maryland, the jury deliberated for about two hours before finding Andre Taylor guilty of murdering 28-year-old Vickie Lynn Belk in 1979.
Taylor, now 63, faces life in prison when he is sentenced on Sept. 6.
In a news release announcing Taylor’s conviction, Charles County State’s Attorney Tony Covington thanked the prosecutors in his office and detectives with the sheriff’s office for their persistence in investigating the case and bringing it to justice.
“These cold cases are rarely solved,” Covington said in a statement. “They get solved with dogged determination and talent. I am very grateful that Charles County, after 45 years, was able to bring some closure for the Belk family and justice for Vickie Lynn Belk.”
Mysterious disappearance
At the time she was killed, Belk lived in Suitland, Maryland, with her boyfriend and worked as a management analyst at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in D.C. Her boyfriend reported her missing on Aug. 28, 1979, after she failed to come home after work.
Her body was found the next day by a teenager out riding a bike on Metropolitan Church Road and Route 277 in Charles County. Belk had been shot in the side of the head and was found undressed from the waist down.
Detectives collected evidence in the initial investigation, but the case eventually went cold.
Over the years, authorities said, Charles County detectives kept revisiting the cold case, looking for new leads, new clues — all to no avail.
How the case was cracked
In more recent years, Detective Sgt. John Elliott of the Charles County Sheriff’s Office’s Criminal Investigations Division decided to take another look at the case.
Given the advancements in forensic science — DNA was first used as evidence in a criminal case in the U.S. about a decade after Belk was killed — investigators in 2022 decided to submit the clothing Belk was found wearing at the time her body was discovered for more advanced testing.
The effort yielded enough DNA from the suspected attacker to submit to the national DNA database run by the FBI called CODIS, which contains the DNA profiles from other unsolved crimes and known offenders.
In November 2022, the sheriff’s office got the call they had been waiting on for more than 40 years — the DNA they had submitted matched a known offender in the database and they now had the name of a suspect in Belk’s killing: Andre Taylor.
Detectives then began investigating Taylor’s background. He was 18 at the time of Belk’s killing and lived at a residence on Bryan’s Road at the time, less than 4 miles from where her body was discovered, investigators said. Taylor also had connections to the area of D.C. where police believed Belk was abducted. And he had a violent criminal history.
There was no evidence Belk and Taylor knew each before she went missing, authorities said.
Authorities began trying to track down Taylor and eventually arrested him in June 2023, charging him with Belk’s killing.
In an interview with detectives, Taylor “admitted to actions that amounted to the rape of Belk, but he denied having any part in her murder,” prosecutors said in Friday’s news release.
Following her death, Belk’s family established the Vickie Belk Scholarship Foundation, which awards scholarships in her memory.
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