A 70-year-old man was arrested Friday in connection with a 1983 murder in Southern California, police said.
Michael Larry Manatt, of Huntington Beach, was arrested in connection with the murder of Ronald Gaskey, who police say was killed in his Newport Beach home on December 13, 1983.
Newport Beach police said in a statement that after detectives conducted interviews and collected evidence at Gaskey’s home at the time of the killing, they were unable to charge a suspect, leaving the case cold.
It was reopened in recent years, police said, and they were able to identify Manatt as a suspect.
It was not clear how police concluded Manatt was a suspect. A motive was not specified.
Police said Manatt was jailed on $1 million bail. Online court records that might indicate whether he was still in custody could not be found Sunday evening. A jailer said by phone that the facility could not release information about the custody status of the inmates.
It was unclear whether Manatt has an attorney. The Orange County Public Defender’s Office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Sunday evening.
A former girlfriend found Gaskey, who was 36 at the time of his death, after he failed to show up as a construction worker, The Associated Press reported, citing The Orange County Register, which cited a 1983 article by the Daily Pilot. He had been hit in the head and face with a blunt object.
According to the Daily Pilot article, Gaskey was a “person with a very security-conscious conscience” and had tried to fortify his home, the AP reported. His door was found unlocked, which neighbors said would have been unusual.
At the time, police ruled out robbery as a motive because Gaskey’s home had not been ransacked, the AP said.
Huntington Beach is a city about 36 miles south of Los Angeles. Newport Beach is a city in neighboring Orange County, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
