Family grateful after Mobile Police make arrest in cold case murder from 1999

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    MOBILE, AL (WALA ) — It was a cold case murder from years ago, but after two decades investigators tell us they got their man.

The suspect in the case Jamelle Thomas is locked up at Metro Jail charged with murder.

It has been a long wait for the family of Marcel Chandler.

“It really just tore my family apart,” said Janice Chandler, Marcel’s mom.

A picture of marcel chandler has hung on the wall of the family home for years. A constant reminder of the December 13th, 1999 shooting on Cresthaven Road.

“Police department, words just fail me 20 years and they have been thinking about my son and me,” Janice said.

Janice credits this arrest to a caring police department that stood by the family since the murder.

“I’m happy about the closure that we’re getting, but all of these years all I remember was their tears that good support,” she said. “Officers cry, they care.”

Tims was the lead investigator on the case who promised Marcel she would find who killed him.

“It was at the autopsy, I had a tendency of whispering in my victim’s ear, that was the thing I did back then, so I made a promise to him that we would get justice one day,” she said.

Now 20 years later, the suspect accused of murdering Marcel is 42-year-old Jamelle Thomas, he is charged with intentional murder and had bond set at $250,000.

Janice has a message for him.

“I was sad that he took my son’s life, because you just don’t have the right to do that,” she said.

Tims said she always knew who the suspect was in the case, but they just needed the proof. She says this was the last case of hers that was unsolved.

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