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Investigators have confirmed they extradited a former U.S. soldier in connection with the rape and murder of a woman 37 years ago.
The unnamed 29-year-old was raped and beaten so severely that she was close to death in the German town of Goeppingen in October 1985.
There are currently about 100 US military bases in Germany.
Investigators believe the woman was threatened with a knife and seriously injured as she was returning home from an embroidery course.
The assailant had reportedly tried to bury him alive in a wooded area near the scene.
Prosecutors say the attacker tried to cover up his crime by dragging the nearly dead woman away from the town center.
They declined to reveal her identity or whether she is still alive today.
The surviving victim, despite her horror, had described the attacker as an American soldier of color but had failed to identify him from the portrait photographs and the case was later suspended.
But this week German prosecutors in Ulm announced that a 64-year-old retired U.S. military man has been detained over the case several decades ago.
The suspect was arrested last month in the state of Mississippi and was recently extradited to Germany after matching DNA tests with crime scene evidence.
Prosecutors said the suspect refused to speak but did not even oppose the extradition order, possibly to avoid punishment for other violations in the US.
They confirmed reports from the German network SWR that he had also been convicted of several violent crimes in his home country.
The development comes as German investigators have reopened another old sex crime case, to determine if the same suspect may be responsible.
The case concerns the tied body of a 31-year-old kitchen worker found in the remote town of Deggingen, a few months after the Goeppingen attack.
At the time, US units were stationed at Cooke Barracks barracks from the late 1960s to 1991.
The development was confirmed by Ulm Public Prosecutor Michael Bischofberger.
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