Inmate charged in 1980 killing

SEATTLE – A man serving prison time for assault has been charged with second-degree murder in a previously unsolved killing in Des Moines, and police say he has confessed.

In court papers filed Wednesday, King County prosecutors say DNA links 54-year-old James Maynard Blair to the strangling of Kirk Parker, whose naked, bloody body was found in his trailer home in 1980.

Police gathered evidence, but the case languished until Des Moines police Detective David Mohr turned to DNA testing.

Mohr writes that Blair was questioned last month and said Parker picked him up hitchhiking. Blair then reportedly said he strangled Parker with a tie after inhaling amyl nitrate during an unwanted sexual encounter.