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Children discovered her corpse, which was partially nude and bore severe head wounds, stab injuries and injuries consistent with strangling.
Police had puzzled over the case ever since but Koblenz chief prosecutor Manfred Mannweiler said advances in DNA technology had allowed police to reopen the investigation and arrest the suspect in a retirement home.
“Methods have improved since the crime,” he said. “What is possible today would have been less so in 1994.”
He said the arrested man’s DNA had been on file since he had been convicted in 1999 of attempting to rape a 16-year-old girl in Koblenz and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
The genetic data had later been deleted but police obtained a new saliva sample from the suspect which could now be matched to a DNA trace found inside Lopez’s jeans, Mannweiler said.
“There was a nagging fear gnawing at everyone that the case might never be solved,” Mannweiler said. “There’s relief that we might solve it now.”
Police had informed Lopez’s father of the arrest on Monday, Mannweiler added.
Senior detective Friederike Manheller-Sander of Koblenz Police said officers took up the case after forming a unit last August to look at cold cases.
“Behind every case there is a person whose life was taken too soon,” she said. “Our commitment is to do everything possible to find answers.”