A suspect in cold case murder who was arrested thanks to a tip from a Washington Examiner reader has pleaded guilty to the 1997 killing in southern Virginia. Lonnie Bowers Jr. pleaded to a lesser charge of second-degree murder last week, a day before he was to go to trial in the slaying of 21-year-old Carl Shawn Turner at a house party in Suffolk, Va.

For more than a decade, Turner’s death went unsolved. No one could or would come forward to identify the gunman, even though there were more than 50 people at the house, police said. Turner’s murder was classified as a cold case.