COFFEE COUNTY, Ga. (WALB) — An arrest has now been made in a nearly 30-year-old homicide case out of Coffee County.

On Thursday, Oct. 1, James Lawrence III, 47, was arrested and charged with malice murder, murder, and aggravated assault in connection with the case, law enforcement confirms. Officials say DNA evidence tied him to the scene of the crime.

Myers, who was 20 at the time, was killed Sept. 15, 1998. GBI officials say she lived in Broxton with her common-law husband and their 2-year-old daughter, Chelsea Kaitlyn. Late on Sept. 14, Myers left her house to go to a store. Multiple witnesses saw and/or spoke with her at the store, GBI says. Myers was also seen leaving the store alone in her car.

Not long after midnight on Sept. 15, Myers was found dead outside of her car on the side of Broxton Fitzgerald Highway. After canvassing the neighborhood, officials determined people in the area had heard a conversation and then a car engine accelerate. Someone went to investigate what they’d heard and found Myers dead from stab wounds.

“We weren’t aware that she had any enemies. Everybody loved her. She was just a happy-go-lucky person,” Myers’ grandmother, Josephine Adams, said back in a 2003 interview with WALB.

The family has been holding a candlelight vigil every September since Myers’ death.

GBI held a news conference Friday morning to discuss the case.

“Although today brings us a little bit of closure, it’s only the beginning of a new chapter, but a chapter that we are ready for... Christy Dawn Myers is not forgotten. It is a new day, a new dawn, and may justice prevail,” said Myers’ daughter, Chelsea Wolfe, at Friday’s news conference.

Wolfe is celebrating her 30th birthday in November, and she says this was the best birthday present she could’ve gotten.

“I always had questions. For sure. And it always weighed on me. It always weighed on me. It was a little bit of a unique kind of grief because I was so young when it happened. So I grew up with not knowing who she was and not knowing, you know, who she would be now. And just the small things that, you know, seem small to everybody else that mean a lot to me that I missed out on with my mother,” Wolfe said.

This is the third cold case Coffee County and GBI officials have solved in the last year and a half. Officials credit the GBI’s Cold Case Unit, created under the Coleman-Baker Act in 2023. The law is named for Tara Baker, a University of Georgia law student killed in 2001, and Rhonda Sue Coleman, killed in Jeff Davis County in 1990 — two unsolved cases that pushed lawmakers to fund a dedicated statewide cold case team.

Coffee County Sheriff Fred Cole says that commitment hasn’t changed.

“I said we would not rest until we knocked on your door and put you in jail. That message still rings true today. We are not done,” Sheriff Cole said.

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