Authorities have arrested a man accused of killing a Florida mother nearly 40 years ago.
Jeffrey Taylor, 64, is accused of fatally shooting Shirley Brant during an attempted robbery at her North Miami Beach office on June 13, 1986, police said Friday.
Brant, a 49-year-old real estate broker, was on the phone with a client when two men entered the office. One of them ordered her to hang up, but she refused.
The man, now identified as Taylor, shot her in the face, officials said.
Brant was transported to a nearby hospital but didn’t survive. Medical examiners later confirmed she had been killed by a single gunshot to the head.
Fingerprints recovered from the scene were never entered into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) because they didn’t meet “certain criteria at the time,” North Miami police said in a news release.
The case then went cold for nearly four decades.
In January 2023, however, a newly formed cold case unit began investigating unresolved homicides. Brant’s case regained momentum a year later, after two retired detectives returned to assist with the investigation, NBC South Florida reported at the time.
After fingerprints recovered from the scene were re-analyzed using forensic technology that wasn’t previously available, investigators were able to match them to Taylor, the Miami Herald reported, citing the arrest warrant.
Taylor was arrested Thursday and charged with second-degree murder with a firearm.
“Justice has finally caught up with a suspect in the 1986 murder of our victim,” North Miami Beach Police Chief Juan Pinillos said at a press conference on Friday, CBS Miami reported.
Investigators are still searching for the second suspect in the crime.
“We will continue to fight for justice no matter how long it takes,” Pinillos said.
