Utah prison inmate charged in 1989 cold case killing

SALT LAKE CITY — Authorities say they’ve solved the 23-year-old murder of a Salt Lake City high school student after a DNA match led them to a man in Utah State Prison.

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill says his office has filed murder, rape and forcible sodomy charges against Thomas Evan Noffsinger for the 1989 murder of Felicia Pappas.

Noffsinger is serving a life sentence in the 1990 murder of Victor Aguilar.

The 17-year-old Pappas was last seen walking alone in the early-morning hours of April 6, 1989, after leaving a billiards hall on State Street. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

Unified Police Department detectives pursuing the cold case last year submitted DNA swabs taken from the victim to the state crime lab. Lab technicians determined Noffsinger was a match.