FLA. COPS SOLVE 1971 GINA JUSTI COLD CASE MURDER

FOR NEARLY 40 years, the Justi family has desperately wondered who killed Gina Justi. Just 14-years-old when she was raped and murdered in August 1971 and left to die in an orange grove, the family now has some answers. Florida cops announced yesterday that they got a DNA hit on a man named Jerry Fletcher, now 69, who is serving a life sentence for killing another teenage girl in Illinois in 1974.
Fletcher had worked as a painter in the Tampa area at the time of the vicious slaying but his name never came up until the DNA match. When detectives interviewed him, he quickly clued into why they were there
and clammed up.

James Justi was only 12 when his sister was murdered. He said the Gina was never far from their minds but they had long given up hope that there would be an arrest.
He said: "It kind of came out of the blue. We were totally, totally shocked. We totally gave up on it."
His brother Tony told the Tampa Tribune that Gina was a typical teen and that her family just had moved to Town 'N Country from Saugerties, NY, when she left her home on Aug. 6, 1971.
She had gone out that day to look at a puppy.
MORE ON A 40 YEAR TRAGEDY