New DNA procedures have cracked a 25-year-old murder of a Florida woman, leading to the arrest of her long-time boyfriend.

The Sanford Police Department said that Gary Durrance, 73, has been charged with second degree homicide in the 1999 murder of Sherry Holtz, WKMG reported.

Holtz was 50 when she was last seen on December 3, at a bar in Sanford. Her body was found the next day, a half mile from the bar.

Her neck had been cut — the cause of death — and the autopsy found evidence of blunt force trauma, strangulation, and sexual battery.

“This was, there’s no other way to describe it but a brutal homicide, OK? She was found laying on her back on a concrete slab approximately 20 feet into the wood line. Her clothing was pulled off, exposing most of her body,” Sanford Police spokesperson Bianca Gillett said Friday.

DNA testing was inconclusive at the time, but samples were preserved, Gillett said. With improved processes, the DNA pointed to Durrance.

Durrance and Holtz lived together with roommates, who told detectives in 1999 that Durrance had kicked Holtz out the day before she disappeared. Durrance told police he hadn’t seen her since December 1.

“Roommates had stated that night that Gary Durrance was in the house on Crow’s Bluff the night of the homicide. However, they couldn’t put him there for the whole night,“ Gillett said. “Some of the indications were that he left late on the third or early on the fourth at some point and returned between 2:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. on the fourth, so we’ve got gaps in that alibi.”

Sanford Police Chief Cecil Smith said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conducted new tests on the DNA in June, leading to an arrest warrant for Durrance, issued on July 18. He was arrested in Volusia County and is now being held in the Seminole County Jail without bond and is due in court on September 10, court records show.

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[Featured image: Gary Durrance/Seminole County Jail and Sherry Holtz/Sanford Police Department]