"It's not a neighborhood where there's a lot of crime or a lot of murders or assaults," said resident Jude Wiggins.
August 30, 1990. Several men broke into the home where a husband and wife were sleeping and robbed them. Wistong Potes, 26, was shot in the head and killed. His 20-year-old wife, Tamara Potes, was raped, shot in the back of the head and left for dead, but survived.
"I don't think they had been in the house very long," Wiggins told us. "Maybe a year, year and a half."
Wiggins remembers it well.
"Basically, everybody was stunned because nobody really knew the couple real well. Nobody anticipated it," said Wiggins. "We never had anything like that happen, so it was quite a shock."
It left Wiggins, who was president of the Rolling Fork Homeowner's Association, with a lot of questions.
"It was never clear why they were killed," she said.
Life in the neighborhood continued and while investigators searched for the killer, the trail eventually went cold and remained that way for two decades, until authorities say DNA evidence collected at the crime scene linked Andre Sloan, 48, to the killing. He's serving a life sentence for the 1993 murders of three people.
"It's amazing they found out 20 years later," said Wiggins. "It's great to know that it's solved and it's over and done with for everybody."
Sloan is charged with capital murder. Tamara Potes died a year after her husband was murdered. She was killed in a drive-by shooting. Though it's unclear why it took so long for sheriff's investigators to submit the DNA evidence, it's not unusual. Investigators will often go back and revisit cold cases as DNA technology improves.
