Suspect identified 36 years after college student Cathy Sposito brutally killed on Arizona hiking trail

A young college student who was brutally killed on a Prescott hiking trail decades ago was the victim of a serial predator who took his own life years later, authorities said Friday.

Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes announced at a news conference that DNA evidence indicates Bryan Scott Bennett was the man responsible for 23-year-old Catherine "Cathy" Sposito's 1987 death.

In November 2022, authorities had the body of Bennett, who killed himself in 1994, exhumed. It wasn't until March that investigators confirmed DNA on a wrench used in the slaying belonged to him.