BEAUFORT COUNTY, S.C. (WWJ) – A man who was recently arrested for the brutal murder of a young Michigan woman more than three decades ago has been found dead in his South Carolina jail cell.
Three Rivers police officials announced Saturday Robert Odell Waters, 53, was found dead in his cell at the Beaufort County Detention Center on Saturday, less than a week after he was arrested for the 1988 murder of 19-year-old Cathy Swartz.
While a cause of death has not been determined, The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) was requested to conduct the in-custody death investigation. Three Rivers Police Department is waiting for the results from the Coroner’s Office before making a statement to the media later this week, Chief R. Scott Boling said in a Facebook post.
Police officials announced last Monday that Waters had been arrested on charges of open murder, 35 years after Swartz was killed in her apartment in Three Rivers, a small town about 30 miles south of Kalamazoo.
Investigators determined after Swartz’s murder that she tried to fight off her attacker, but was “overcome by numerous stab wounds, a vicious beating and strangulation,” according to Three Rivers police.
Her 9-month-old daughter, Courtney, was in the next room during the attack, officials said.
At the time of the murder, crime technicians with the Michigan State Police assisted the Three Rivers Police Department. While investigators were able to locate fingerprints, blood and footprints, they were unable to find a match to the evidence at the scene.
As years went by, Three Rivers police officers continued to investigate. In the 2000s, DNA technology “made huge advancements” and officers entered the DNA profile into CODIS, a combined DNA index system, but still, decades went by without a match.
Last year Three Rivers police “made it a top priority to bring justice to the Swartz family and solve the cold case.” In a partnership with MSP, investigators utilized forensic genetic genealogy, which helped them narrow the suspect pool to a single family. Investigators then interviewed, fingerprinted and DNA tested the family members until they identified Waters as the suspect, officials said.
The investigative team went to South Carolina to interview Waters and after speaking with him were eventually able to gather enough probable cause to arrest him for open murder.
"While nothing can replace the loss of Cathy Swartz, and the impact this senseless tragedy has had, we hope the identification and arrest of a suspect will bring some long-awaited closure to her family and friends,” officials said in a press release prior to his death.
Boling thanked a number of people who helped solve the cold case, including investigators, prosecutors, MSP and Cold Case Project students at Western Michigan University, who scanned and organized about 10,000 documents related to the case.
"These students are our future of law enforcement and helped detectives in being able to search and find information in a plethora of paperwork,” officials said.
Authorities have not released a possible motive in Swartz's murder. It was not immediately clear how long Waters had been living in South Carolina or what ties he had to Michigan.
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