Four decades after a 22-year-old woman was found dead in a field behind an elementary school in Virginia Beach, Virginia, police say DNA evidence has finally identified her killer. Charles Berry, 66, of Newington, Connecticut, was arrested Monday and charged with rape and capital murder in the commission of a rape, Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Neudigate announced at a Wednesday news conference.
The victim, Roberta Walls, was discovered on May 15, 1986. She never saw her 23rd birthday. Berry, police say, was a U.S. Navy serviceman stationed in the Virginia Beach area at the time of the killing. He spent the next 40 years free, living, by all appearances, an ordinary life in Connecticut while Walls' family waited for answers.
The arrest marks the end of one of Virginia Beach's longest-running unsolved homicide investigations and stands as another example of how DNA breakthroughs are catching up with suspects who once believed time was on their side.
A young woman found behind an elementary school
Walls' body was found in a field behind Old Donation Elementary School in Virginia Beach, the New York Post reported. Authorities said she had suffered violent trauma, multiple stab wounds, and had been raped. She was found "with obvious signs of trauma due to a violent assault," police previously stated.
Virginia Beach Police Deputy Chief Jeffery Wilkerson described Walls at the news conference as someone who mattered to the people around her.
"[She] was a loving daughter, a big sister, a friend to those who knew her and someone that could be counted on in her circle of friends."
For nearly four decades, the case sat cold. Detectives cycled through. Leads dried up. But the physical evidence, preserved DNA samples recovered from Walls' body, outlasted the silence.
Fifteen years to develop a DNA profile, then more dead ends
The investigation's long arc tells a story of persistence against repeated frustration. It took until 2001, fifteen years after the murder, for forensic technology to advance enough to develop a male DNA profile from the evidence. Police Capt. Michele Wyatt said the profile was entered into the national DNA databank.
No match came back.
Investigators then began the painstaking work of comparison. Wyatt described the scope of that effort at the news conference:
"During the course of the investigation, the DNA of more than 30 males was compared with the offender's DNA, and all were eliminated."
Thirty suspects tested. Thirty dead ends. The case remained open, but the trail was cold. In 2017, authorities received funding to use the preserved DNA samples to compile a composite image of a person of interest, Fox News reported. That effort generated public attention but still did not produce an arrest.
The real break came in 2023, when the Virginia Beach Police Department received grant funding that allowed investigators to pursue forensic genealogy leads, Wyatt said. Forensic genealogy, the technique of tracing DNA through family trees using public and commercial databases, has emerged in recent years as the single most powerful tool for cracking cold cases. It helped identify the Golden State Killer in California. It has helped convict serial rapists whose crimes went unsolved for decades.
In this case, the genealogy work led investigators to what Wyatt called a "possible suspect who had strong ties to the area during the relevant time period." That suspect was Charles Berry.
A Navy connection and a direct DNA match
Investigators discovered Berry had served in the U.S. Navy and was stationed in the Virginia Beach area during the time of Walls' murder, Wyatt said. That placed him in the right location at the right time, a detail that had eluded detectives for decades.
A direct DNA comparison sealed the case. Wyatt told reporters that the comparison "ultimately identified Charles Berry as the source of the DNA profile."
Berry was arrested Monday in Connecticut by the Newington Police Department. He is now in custody there. ABC News reported that court records do not make clear whether Berry has an attorney. His extradition status and next court date remain unknown.
He faces charges of rape and capital murder in the commission of a rape, among the most serious charges Virginia law allows.
A department that refused to let go
Chief Neudigate did not sugarcoat what Berry's decades of freedom meant for the community. At Wednesday's news conference, he was blunt:
"It's incredibly scary for the community to think that someone who would rape and brutally murder someone 40 years ago was out in society."
That is the grim arithmetic of cold cases. Every year a killer walks free is a year the victim's family lives without justice, and a year the public lives with a predator it doesn't know about. The question of how many other cases might be solved with the same forensic tools hangs over every police department in the country. The FBI has stepped into some investigations where local agencies lacked the resources or urgency to push DNA testing forward.
The Virginia Beach Police Department, to its credit, did not give up on this one. The department released a statement after the arrest that spoke directly to the family and to the public:
"This breakthrough stands as a powerful testament to the relentless persistence of our detectives, who refused to let Roberta be forgotten. We hope this closure brings a measure of peace to the Walls family and sends a clear message: no matter how much time passes, we will never stop searching for the truth."
That is the right message. But it is also worth noting what made this arrest possible: grant funding. The forensic genealogy work that cracked the case did not begin until 2023, when the department secured the money to pursue it. The DNA profile had been sitting in a national databank since 2001, twenty-two years before investigators had the resources to take the next step.
What remains unanswered
Several questions remain open. Police have not disclosed the specific cause and manner of Walls' death beyond the references to violent trauma and stab wounds. The specific grant program that funded the genealogy work has not been named. Berry has not made any public statement since his arrest.
Whether Berry will fight extradition to Virginia or waive it remains to be seen. No court date has been announced. Cases like this one, where families refuse to quit and investigators keep working the evidence, have produced convictions in jurisdictions across the country in recent years. But each case must still survive the courtroom.
For now, a 66-year-old man sits in a Connecticut jail, and a family that has waited 40 years for someone to answer for what happened to Roberta Walls finally has a name and a face attached to the charges.
Justice delayed is never fully just. But it beats the alternative, and every cold case solved is a reminder that the evidence doesn't forget, even when the system is slow to act.
