Police believe they have finally cracked the case of Lorraine Snell who was murdered on September 26, 1980, at the age of 19. 

On Thursday, the New York Police Department arrested James Burrus in West Brighton on Staten Island and told news outlets they believe he is the person who killed Snell. The 63-year-old was married to Snell's cousin and was originally a suspect, but police could never prove it, according to The New York Daily News. 

Thanks to improved DNA technology, police were able to match skin found under Snell's nails to Burrus, who is now a bishop with By Divine Purpose Christian Center in Staten Island. In 2015, Snell's mother, 82-year-old Pearl Snell-Holder, asked the NYPD to reopen the case.

“Forty years is a long time. But everything worked out beautiful. Never gave up. It will always be hard. Always. I’m a mother. I bear the pain…I will never forget. Never forget. It’s justice for her but not a closure for me," Snell-Holder said Thursday outside the Brooklyn Supreme Court courtroom, according to The Daily News.

Snell was working as a legal secretary for the Brooklyn district attorney in 1980 and was at a catering hall in Midwood Terrace to put a down payment on the venue for her engagement party. Burrus has long admitted that he ran into Snell while she was there but claimed he parted ways with her after walking with her for a few blocks.

Police eventually found Snell's body in a station wagon in East Flatbush. Some news outlets said Snell had been strangled to death with a cable, but others said she had been stabbed to death. Burrus worked at the C-Town where Snell’s body was found at some point, and the car belonged to Burrus' boss, Brooklyn News 12 reported. 

A month before Snell's death, Burrus had been released after spending three years in prison on a robbery conviction. On the same night as Snell's death, Burrus robbed a taxi stand and was sent back to prison until 1985. 

“We did leave the building together. I walked her, I believe it was, on Clarendon Road. A few blocks from her house, I went one way, and I watched her go up by her block. Those cops checked me from head to toe. They had a guy come in to pick under my nails,” Burrus said in a 2014 interview with PIX 11.

Burrus is being held without bail, and he will have his next court date on March 24. He is facing a sentence of 25 years to life, according to the New York Post. 

"My daughter was missing, I knew it was him. And, I said it. I never trusted him. And, I feel you know from day one he was the one," Snell-Holder told Brooklyn News 12.