A pharmacist was found stabbed to death in her home 24 years ago. An ‘acquaintance’ has finally been charged

An Alabama man has been arrested for the cold-case murder of a pharmacist who was found stabbed to death in her Georgia home 24 years ago.

Clerence George, 63, faces charges of murder and aggravated assault in the 2000 slaying of 43-year-old Julie Ann McDonald, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Friday.

McDonald had likely been dead for three or four days when her body was found inside her LaFayette, Georgia, home on June 11, 2000, Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said. George, who was an acquaintance of McDonald, was one of the four or five suspects in the case at the time, partly because he was found with her checkbook, the sheriff said.

“It was not a stranger crime,” Wilson said on Friday. “They knew each other.”

But there was not enough evidence at the time to make an arrest, he added.

George, who would have been 39 years old at the time of McDonald’s killing, has a lengthy arrest record in Alabama, but none for violent crimes that court records show, AL.com reported.

In 2015, investigators reopened the cold case and submitted evidence for testing, but again there was not enough to file charges. The case was reopened again in 2023, and again this year – this time technology helped lead to formal charges.

Authorities are not yet releasing a possible motive in McDonald’s death, but investigators said advances in crime lab technology and good old-fashioned police work led to the arrest.

“There was some really good work done here and not all of it was scientific,” Special Agent In Charge Joe Montgomery said.

“There was some leg work and door-knocking. The GBI never stops working on unsolved cases. There was a tremendous effort by these investigators, who sometimes ran into a brick wall, but they kept going.”

“It’s getting better every day,” Montgomery said of technology. “It gives us hope for some of the other cases that we couldn’t solve, 20 or 30 years ago, we have that ability now.”

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said that US Marshals arrested George at his home in Birmingham, Alabama, on August 22 and that he is being held in the Jefferson County jail, pending extradition to Georgia.

McDonald’s niece and nephew were notified of George’s arrest, but many of her relatives have since passed away.

“The biggest gratification I’ve seen in working these cold cases is giving the family some relief knowing that someone has been found guilty in a court of law by their peers and that someone is held accountable for a death that was totally unnecessary,” Sheriff Wilson said.

“There’s some sense of relief that the family can put it behind them and go on. Not that it gives them great joy, but it’s the fact that they know a person has been held accountable for that death.”