Tipster helps Florida cold case detectives crack a woman's murder 21 years ago

Twenty-one years after 35-year-old Thelma Storrs, left, was found murdered in Lee County, Fla., Luis Nieves, 52 was charged with the homicide after cold case detectives said they recently received a tip in the case. (Lee County Sheriff's Office)

Florida cold case detectives say a tip has led to the arrest of a homeless man in the unsolved murder of a woman 21 years ago.

Luis Nieves, 52, was booked into the Lee County Jail Friday night on a charge of murder in the death of 35-year-old Thelma Storrs in 1998.

A tipster recently told detectives the identity of a possible suspect, according to a news release from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, announcing Nieves' arrest.

An investigation ensued and led to Nieves’ arrest.

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“This arrest also serves as a reminder that it is never too late to come forward with information,” Sheriff Carmine Marceno said. “Cold-blooded killers will not walk free in Lee County.”

Nieves has four prior arrests for domestic violence in 2007, 2014 and 2016, online court records show. The records show him living at a Fort Myers address at the time of the arrests.

Investigators said Storrs’ body was found in a pasture near Fort Myers on March 17, 1998. She had been reported missing two weeks earlier.

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Her fingerprints taken from a prostitution arrest three months before her murder helped authorities identify the body, the Fort Myers News-Press reported at the time.

Friends at that time told the paper Storrs drifted into prostitution after becoming a crack addict.

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"She really got going down the wrong track a few years ago," one friend was quoted as saying. "It was really hard to watch.”