A man was hit and killed outside his Des Moines home in 1997. The driver took off. Police say the man they believe was behind the wheel fled the state.
For 29 years, nobody was arrested. Then someone watched a rerun of "America's Most Wanted" and sent in a tip.
Now police have a suspect in custody in New Jersey.
The Des Moines Police Department shared the news on Tuesday, Sept. 29. It was the same date Leslie Ruby was killed, back in 1997.
Ruby was 64 years old. He was hit outside his home on Easton Boulevard, on the city's east side. The driver did not stop.
Investigators named the man they say was driving. Police identified him as Gerardo Garcia-Michel. He was 28 at the time.
But police say Garcia-Michel left Iowa before officers could arrest him.
Detectives kept working the case. Over time, they ran out of leads. The case went cold.
"America's Most Wanted" is a TV show that asks viewers to help catch people on the run. The show did an episode on this case. That episode first aired in 1998.
Years later, that episode ran again. Someone watched the rerun. That person sent a tip to Crime Stoppers.
Police say that tip helped detectives find Garcia-Michel in New Jersey.
U.S. Marshals arrested him there. The Marshals are the federal officers who track down people who run from the law.
Des Moines police are now working to bring Garcia-Michel back to Iowa. That process is called extradition. It means one state hands a person over to another state to face a case.
Police have called it a vehicular homicide cold case. Vehicular homicide means a death caused by someone driving a car.
The person who sent the tip was not named.
Ruby's death went unsolved for close to three decades.
The break came from a viewer who remembered an old TV episode.
Garcia-Michel has not been convicted of anything in this case.
Everyone is presumed innocent until proved otherwise.
