CLOSING THE CASE

Arizona Detectives Link Man to 36-Year-Old Murder of College Student

Detectives had to exhume his body to link his DNA to the crime.

Arizona cops believe they’ve solved the decades-old murder of a local college student. Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes announced Friday that Bryan Scott Bennett has been identified as the killer of Cathy Sposito, who was killed in 1987. Sposito was just 23 years old when she was murdered at a hiking trail by a then-16-year-old Bennett, officials said. She was apparently the first of Bennett’s several victims—he attacked and sexually assaulted another victim three years later on the same trail, and had at least two more victims before he died by suicide in 1994. Detectives exhumed Bennett’s body to link his DNA to Spositio’s death, effectively closing the long-open case.