A Covington man has been charged in a nearly 30-year-old cold case in Jacksonville, Florida.
Channel 2’s sister station Action News Jax reports that Michael Shane Ziegler faces murder and sexual battery charges in the death of Tina Livernash Heins.
Police found Heins, who was 15 weeks pregnant, stabbed to death in her Atlantic Beach apartment on April 17, 1994. Heins lived her husband, Jeremy, and brother-in-law, Chad Heins.
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Prosecutors said Jeremy Heins was working overnight at the Naval Station Mayport when his wife was killed. Her brother-in-law, who was believed to be the only other person in the apartment, said he slept through the attack.
Chad Heins was later convicted in Tina’s death in 1996 and sentenced to prison. But investigators later found new DNA evidence in 2007 that pointed to someone else being in the apartment.
“A DNA profile of an unknown man emerged. DNA from under Tina’s nails, from hairs collected from her body, and from a semen stain on her sheets, were from a man who was not her husband and not her brother in law Chad,” State Attorney Melissa Nelson said.
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Investigators sent the DNA to Othram Labs in Texas, which has helped solve other cold cases including ones in Georgia.
Nelson said the lab testing and search led back to Ziegler, a close friend of the Heins who was at their wedding months before Tina’s death.
The US Marshals, Georgia State Patrol, the Newton County Sheriff’s Office and Clayton County Sheriff’s Office performed a traffic stop in September and took him into custody.
He is now being held at the Duval County Jail without bond. He entered a not guilty plea during a Tuesday court hearing. Ziegler’s next court date is scheduled for Nov. 12.
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