LOS ANGELES, April 5 (UPI) -- A retired Los Angeles police detective who played a lead role in the controversial murder case against O.J. Simpson was back on the job and helped the LAPD's new "cold case" squad crack its first homicide investigation.
Detective Phil Vannatter came back to the force under a temporary city re-hire program to work with the LAPD's Cold Case Homicide Unit, which announced Friday that it had tracked down a primary suspect in a 1981 murder case.
Vannatter and his partner, Tom Lange, were the lead investigators assigned to investigate the 1994 slayings of Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and waiter Ron Goldman who were found outside Nicole's Brentwood home.
The two veteran officers came under fierce attack for their handling of the investigation during the sensational trial, which ended with the former football star's criminal acquittal the following year. Simpson's defense team argued that the LAPD had both bungled the processing of the bloody crime scene and had attempted to frame Simpson.
Vannatter was one of a trio of detectives credited Friday with unraveling the 1981 slaying of Leo Betancourt, 52, who was shot to death during an apparent robbery near the auto body shop he owned at the corner of Vendome Street and Sunset Boulevard in the city's Rampart Division.
Police officials planned a news conference late Friday to announce that witnesses had identified the late Alfredo Agrelo as one of the two suspects in the slaying. Agrelo died recently while awaiting trial in Arizona. At the time of his death, the state of New Jersey was seeking Agrelo's extradition.
The detectives were led to Agrelo through information they obtained from a convicted multiple murderer in a California prison who reportedly had new information on several unsolved cases.
The identity of the second suspect in Betancourt's murder remained unknown.
