Rayna Rison murder was a cold case for over a decade until Jason Tibbs was arrested

This week Unusual Suspects examines the murder of Rayna Rison, a case that took detectives 20 years to solve.

March 26, 1993, in La Porte, Ind, and 16-year-old Rayna Rison went missing and was never seen alive again. Her body was found around a month later in a shallow pond, she’d been strangled to death.

Rison was a bright student who also worked three jobs and had dreams of becoming a vet, but her life also had a darker side to it and she was the subject of abuse by several men in her life.

Police initially suspected her brother-in-law Raymond McCarty, who had impregnated her and was charged with child molestation. In 1998 he was also charged with her murder, but the charge failed to stick and he was released 15 months later. After that the case went cold, despite being featured on America’s Most Wanted.

Finally in August 2013, 38-year-old Jason Tibbs was arrested and charged with Rison’s murder. He’d been seeing her on and off but they’d fallen out over her refusing to date him. A witness had spotted him and another man arguing over what to do with a body in the trunk of a car and the witness had then recognised the missing girl when her photo appeared in the press.

In 2014 Tibbs was sentenced to 40 years in prison, though he is likely to only serve 20.

Unusual Suspects airs at 11:00 AM on Investigation Discovery.