An arrest was made last month to bring a degree of closure to the 1989 murder of Ewing C. Scroggs in Pacific Beach. According to the San Diego Police Department (SDPD), 51-year-old Howard Dean Jamison was arrested on Aug. 24 near his residence in Milford, Conn. On the afternoon of Dec. 10, 1989, family members found Scroggs deceased in his residence at 4890 Mission Blvd. after neighbors said they had not seen him for days. According to police reports, Scroggs was found in a bedroom and was determined to be the victim of a brutal attack. A SDPD murder investigation determined that several items were missing from the residence. Despite homicide detectives collecting evidence from the scene – including fingerprints and biological DNA evidence – and conducting interviews with friends and family, all leads were eventually exhausted and the investigation was inactivated. According to the SDPD, their cold case homicide team reviewed all files related to the investigation two times over the past 19 years. During these reviews, viable evidence was submitted for analysis and comparison. In April, according to the police, SDPD laboratory personnel advised cold case detectives that the FBI found a possible DNA match between evidence retrieved at the crime scene and a subject who was arrested in Connecticut for an unrelated crime. As a result of the match, Jamison – who previously was not listed as a suspect in the case – was identified as a suspect in the investigation. Detectives re-opened the investigation and confirmed that Jamison was in the San Diego area at the time of the murder. According to the investigation, Jamison was arrested one day after the murder as a fugitive from Connecticut. According to reports, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, working in conjunction with the SDPD and FBI, issued an arrest warrant for Jamison in response to the new evidence. On Aug. 24 at about 1:30 p.m. local time, SDPD Homicide detectives and officers from the Milford, Conn. Police Department arrested Jamison and booked him into jail on one count of murder. His extradition to San Diego was pending.