There has been an arrest in the 1991 murder of Cindy Wanner in Placer County, and the culprit according to the sheriff's office, is a known sex offender who had only been out of prison 10 months when Wanner was kidnapped and killed.

On November 25, 1991, 35-year-old Cindy Wanner had been stopping in to clean her sister's home in affluent Granite Bay, California, a quiet suburb of Sacramento, with her 11-month-old child in tow. When her husband came to find her some time later, her car, shoes, and coat were all still there at the house, and the infant was strapped into a high chair and crying, but Cindy was nowhere to be found.

A hunter would then find Wanner's remains three weeks later and about 35 miles away, in Foresthill, near the Tahoe National Forest. She had been brutally raped and strangled, and investigators believed her kidnapper had likely kept her alive for a period of time before killing her.

The Placer County Sheriff's Office announced Monday that they had arrested 64-year-old James Lawhead Jr in connection with crime. Lawhead was considered a high-risk, mentally-disordered sex offender, and he had been sentenced to 19 years in prison for a 1980 case in which he broke into a home, beat an elderly woman, and raped an 11-year-old girl.

After serving 11 years of that sentence, Lawhead was released, and authorities believe he then found Wanner and somehow abducted her without much struggle, just 10 months his release.

It seems that Lawhead remained in Northern California for over a decade after the crime, and he was arrested in 2002 for failing to register as a sex offender in Placer County, according to the sheriff's office. Three years later, he was arrested again on an outstanding weapons charge in the city of Lincoln, and sometime after that he fled California and began living under an assumed name, Vincent Reynolds.

Recent DNA analysis in the Wanner cold case led investigators to believe Lawhead was the suspect, but they were unable to locate him. As KPIX reports, the sheriff's office had prepared a video that they were planning to use to enlist the public's help in trying to locate Lawhead, but before releasing it, they got a tip from the Scottsdale Police Department in Arizona, which got a hit on the suspect using facial recognition technology.

Last Friday, Lawhead was arrested at a home in Bullhead, Arizona which belongs to his sister.

"Our detectives flew out there immediately upon his arrest and served a search warrant, seizing numerous items of evidence from the home, including multiple loaded firearms staged throughout the house, and a bag that had his clothes, $15,000 in cash, and a burner phone," said Placer County Sheriff Wayne Woo at Monday's press conference.

Lawhead's sister, 71-year-old Teri Lawhead of San Clemente, California, was also arrested in Lancaster County, South Carolina, and she has been charged as an accessory — because investigators say she helped her brother go on the run and lied to authorities about not knowing his whereabouts.

James Lawhead has been charged with one count of kidnapping, and one count of murder, along with special circumstances of rape and kidnapping during the commission of a murder. He is awaiting extradition from Mojave County, Arizona back to Placer County.

Below is what seems to be a new version of the slickly produced video that had already been made about the crime and the attempt to locate Lawhead, including the update about his arrest today. It includes an eerie crime-scene image of the dining table where the 11-year-old baby had been stuck in a high-chair, the table still covered in Cheerios.