Source:
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/gen/breaking-news/index.html?p=3847

UPDATE: Suspect in 1975 murders served prison time for sex assault
Published April 10, 2009 @ 10:37 am by Mike Wiggins
A 64-year-old man suspected of murdering a Grand Junction woman and her 5-year-old daughter in 1975 spent nearly 14 years in prison for sexual assault.

Jerry Louis Nemnich was convicted of first-degree sexual assault in Denver County in 1978. He was admitted to the Colorado Department of Corrections on Sept. 22, 1978, and discharged on March 13, 1992, DOC spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti told The Daily Sentinel this morning.

It was not immediately known whether Nemnich has any other criminal convictions.

Nemnich was booked into the Mesa County Jail on Wednesday and is being held on two counts of first-degree murder. He’ll be advised of the charges he’s facing at 1 p.m. today in court.

Grand Junction police said Thursday that they had made an arrest in the stabbing murders of 24-year-old Linda Benson and her daughter, Kelley.

The arrest came as the result of Grand Junction police and retired law-enforcement officers working for the past two years on several unsolved homicides, including the Benson case, dating to the 1970s.

News stories of the time about the murders indicated Steve Benson, Linda’s husband and Kelley’s father, discovered the bodies inside the family’s apartment at 1300 N. 21st St. on July 25, 1975.

Thanks for the info, freshwater. It's always good to hear of a crime getting solved, and I think those of us here really feel a special kind of satisfaction when the cold cases are solved.

I wasn't familiar with these murders until your post. How absolutely horrible for the husband and father to discover his family murdered. I can't imagine the pain he suffered. It must have been nearly unendurable.

I hope justice is finally served in this case, and that these victims' loved ones are still with us, so they can witness the murderer receiving the sentence he deserves.

Thank God for DNA! Almost every other week, I hear about a decades-old case being solved, oftentimes DNA is the reason.

More than likely, UM never did a segment on that case, since it doesn't sound familiar. Nevertheless, it's good to hear that another case is finally being solved.