ATLANTA -- It was the morning of New Year's Eve when a 9-year-old boy made a horrifying discovery: his grandmother--dead in their living room.
Police said she had been strangled.
Nearly one year later, police said they've made an arrest in the case, the 111th and final murder in the City of Atlanta in 2016.
Around 5:40 a.m. on Dec. 31, 2016, police said the boy discovered the body of his grandmother, 47-year-old Julia McTure, when he woke up to use the restroom. He ran to neighbors for help.
A neighbor said he told her, "I'm trying to call my mom, I can't get in contact with her but somebody raped and kill my grandma."
While police initially investigated the crime as a rape and murder, they said that they eventually concluded that McTure had not been raped, according to Atlanta Police Major Adam Lee. But Lee said investigators had several "persons of interest" in the murder.
PHOTOS | 47-year-old Julia McTure
Photos | Grandma's body found on New Year's Eve
At the time, family members said they believed they knew who might be behind the crime.
On Wednesday, police secured a murder warrant for Michael Antonio Lay, now 48 years old.
Family members were not immediately available Thursday to say whether Law was one of those they suspected initially.
Major Lee said that police had 48-year-old Michael Lay on their radar as a person of interest since earlier this year. He said investigators obtained DNA from the crime scene and it turned out to match Lay's DNA.
"The DNA was collected, and his DNA, along with an interview with him, gave us reason to have enough probable cause to process him and charge him with the murder of Ms. McTure," Maj. Lee said.
Lay was already in the Fulton County jail on an unrelated arrest, so police questioned him at the jail and arrested him there on the murder warrant there.
It took a year but Kya McTure says she is getting justice for her mother.
“This is the best news I've gotten all year,” Kya said Thursday, "the best news I could ever ask for,” along with the birth of her now nine-month-old son.
Police have not determined a motive in the murder. They believe that McTure and Lay knew each other, and McTure let him into the apartment the night of the killing.
"Apparently he was a welcomed visitor," Maj. Lee said. "We didn't have any reason to believe that he broke into the apartment. There was a social situation, and at some point he, we believe, murdered Ms. McTure.... It appeared to be just an on-going friendship... a social-type friendship.... It appears that he possibly became angry at some point, and did what he did to Ms. McTure."
Lay, who made his first appearance before a magistrate court judge on Thursday, has a criminal record in Atlanta dating back nearly two decades. He served 10 years in prison from 2004 to 2014 on multiple charges, including rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping and terroristic threats.
