LONGVIEW — Prosecutors say they have no suspects left in the 2000 killing of a Longview woman, with her son cleared by DNA after serving 16 years in prison and her nephew now acquitted by a Cowlitz County jury.
The Daily News reports it took jurors just a few hours to find Brian Kitts not guilty Thursday in the murder of Sharon Cox.
Cox’s son, Donovan Allen, was convicted in 2002 after giving police a confession which he later recanted and being implicated by jailhouse informants who were rewarded for their testimony. New DNA testing cleared him, and he was freed last December.
The testing found Kitts’ DNA on the victim’s collar and on the murder weapon, a .22-caliber rifle that was used to bludgeon her. Defense lawyers argued that Kitts had a good relationship with his aunt and helped her move earlier that year. They said that could have been how his DNA came to be on the rifle.
