Police say DNA has cracked cold case

By PATRICK McGEE

The Arlington police have solved a six-year-old murder case with DNA evidence.

The Tarrant County district attorney's office will seek a capital murder indictment against Tony Lane Gregory, 39, who is in prison for another crime, Arlington police spokeswoman Christy Gilfour said.

Police allege that Gregory sexually assaulted, beat and choked his neighbor, Amy Blow, 46, in her apartment near West Arkansas Lane and South Fielder Road in July 2000. DNA embedded under Blow's fingernails was linked to Gregory, as were fingerprints found on a beer can in a laundry basket at the apartment.

Contacted by phone in North Carolina, her brother, John Spewachek, said the breakthrough in the case brought him a sense of closure.

"To be honest with you, I didn't think I would ever hear from anyone down there ever again," he said. "I'm impressed with the fact that they followed up on this and never lost my name and number. They did an excellent job."

The case was reopened by the Arlington Police Department's cold-case unit in October. Detectives used DNA from the autopsy and matched it with Gregory's from a database of convicts' DNA.

The match was confirmed with DNA from a swab of Gregory's saliva, which was obtained with a subpoena, Gilfour said.

Gregory, who is serving a 40-year sentence in the Allred Unit in Wichita County for a 2001 aggravated sexual assault in Fort Worth, refused to make a statement.

A capital murder conviction can carry a sentence of life in prison or the death penalty.

Investigators determined that Gregory lived in the same apartment complex as Blow. A neighbor said she saw him hiding on her patio July 4, 2000, four days before Blow's friends found her dead in her apartment. The autopsy revealed that Blow had probably been dead for several days.

Gregory lived with his girlfriend at the time of the incident.

She told investigators that she would wake up in the middle of the night to find him missing. He would return without explanation, she said.

Police found no indication of any relationship between Blow and Gregory.

Arlington's cold-case unit has cleared 15 murder cases since it was formed in November 2004.

"This case is more evidence of our department's commitment to hold offenders accountable," Police Chief Theron Bowman said. "Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Amy Blow, but we are at the same time totally committed to bringing other offenders to justice."