It didn't matter that it happened nine years ago. The tips came pouring in.
As soon as police identified skeletal remains as those of Alan Watson -- a 15-year-old boy who disappeared in 2001 -- they were flooded with phone calls this month. Wednesday morning, police arrested Dion Sims, 34, in Watson's shooting death.
"We had multiple people calling in who remembered a particular night in 2001 when something happened," Atlanta police Det. David Quinn told the AJC. "They believed a person was killed but it could never be proven because there was never a body.
"As soon as the body was identified, everybody stepped up the way they needed to," Quinn added. "He was a handsome young man and people just remembered him being there that night."
Quinn said Watson, a McNair High School student who told his grandmother he was going to the movies, was killed at the Flipper Temple Apartments on Abner Terrace in northwest Atlanta in August 2001. His body was buried in woods nearby, Quinn said.
Watson and the much older Sims knew each other, Quinn said. They lived around the corner from each other in the Gresham Park area of south DeKalb County -- several miles from the murder scene.
"Right now we're still not sure what the actual motive was," Quinn said. "We just have indisputable evidence that he is the shooter. We have at least one eyewitness and multiple other witnesses."
Watson's disappearance was a total mystery until a surveyor found a skull -- with a large bullet hole in the forehead -- in woods about 100 yards from the apartment complex last July. Investigators found skeletal remains nearby.
A few months later, Watson's sister saw a TV report on the discovery of a teenage boy's remains. The report mentioned a crown on the victim's left front tooth, and "I just knew that was him," DeAngela Watson told the AJC.
DNA tests performed at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., determined the remains were those of Watson.
Quinn distributed flyers in the area near where the body was found. Those flyers, along with media coverage, spurred lots of tips.
Wednesday morning, police arrested Sims without incident at his mother's home on Gresham Road in south DeKalb.
"He pretty much knew what the deal was," Quinn said. "He didn't offer any kind of resistance."
DeAngela Watson greeted the news with joy and relief.
"I feel so good that they got him," the 30-year-old told the AJC. "[Alan] was nothing but a child, 15 years old. And this guy got away for nine years."
Watson was killed less than a month before his 16th birthday.
His mother died of cancer when he was 5, and he and his sister were raised by their grandmother.
"He was a good kid who went to school and on the weekends he would cut grass to make extra money," DeAngela Watson told the AJC. "I don't know why anybody would want to hurt him or kill him."
Sims is being held without bond in the Fulton County Jail.
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