More than nine years after a man was found shot to death in his Guadalupe County home, the sheriff’s office says it has made an arrest.
Sheriff’s officials announced on Thursday that Levi Cotton, a former Seguin-area resident, was arrested Tuesday in Salt Lake City, Utah, and charged with murder in the death of Joe James Rangel.
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Rangel, 57, was found dead inside his home in the 200 block of Shady Lane in the Meadow Lake subdivision on July 4, 2017. He had been shot multiple times, and his death was ruled a homicide. The case went unsolved for more than nine years.
>>READ MORE: Investigators closer to identifying killer in Seguin man’s 2-year-old murder
The break came after the sheriff’s office brought on a new cold case investigator in February. The sheriff said the investigator went back to the beginning, re-reading the original reports, re-listening to recorded interviews and re-examining the evidence.
In 2017, investigators learned that an unidentified man was reportedly at Rangel’s home the evening before he died, but they could not identify him at the time.
The sheriff said investigators now believe that man was Cotton, who had never before been known as a suspect. More witnesses came forward, and the trail led to Salt Lake City.
The sheriff’s office obtained an arrest warrant, and investigators traveled to Utah, where Cotton was taken into custody the afternoon of Nov. 3 at his place of employment.
The sheriff said the victim’s family was informed. “There’s never closure in these cases,” he said.
Cotton is being held at the Salt Lake County Detention Center while he awaits extradition to Guadalupe County.
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