ABOUT TIME

Man Arrested in Murder of Two Students—48 Years Later

Police say they identified him thanks to ballistic evidence from another murder he committed two years later.

Nearly fifty years after two high school students were murdered in Oregon, a man has been arrested after police say they used evidence from another murder he committed two years later to identify him. Steven Paul Criss, 65, is charged with murdering 18-year-old Peter Zito and 16-year-old Donald Bartron in 1974, shooting both in the head. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office said investigators had matched ballistic evidence from a gun Criss used to murder a man in 1976 while he served in the army. It’s the oldest match on a prosecutable case ever made, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said. Criss, then 17, was an initial suspect in the case, having worked at a restaurant with Bartron. He served 12 years in prison for the murder of Sgt. Jacob “Kim” Brown, before being paroled in 1988. Student Joseph Amir Wilson was arrested 12 hours after the two were shot, but was released after four months in jail when police couldn’t find evidence that he had killed the students. He died in 2000 of a heart attack, according to his obituary. Sheriff Pat Garrett has formally apologized to Wilson’s relatives for wrongfully arresting him 48 years ago.