Robert James Adkins, 62, was taken into custody on Friday in Dobson, North Carolina, on charges that he raped and murdered 14-year-old Ronda Blaylock on August 26, 1980. Blaylock vanished after school in the town the Andy Griffith show was based on, after she and a friend were given a ride by a man named “Jimmy” who first dropped off the friend and then disappeared with Blaylock. The teenager’s partially clothed body was found three days after she disappeared, dead from multiple stab wounds. Police have not yet provided any information about what led them to Adkins, but in 2015, the local sheriff Graham Atkinson launched the Ronda Blaylock Homicide Task Force to look into new leads in the cold case. Blaylock’s mother, who died one year ago to the day before her daughter’s alleged killer was arrested, had said that she wanted whoever was responsible for killing her only child to spend the rest of their life in prison.
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