LOCUST GROVE, Ga. — One Metro Atlanta man is waiting to be extradited to New Jersey after confessing to a crime that happened 37 years ago.
His confession reopened a cold case from a home invasion in 1989.
“He came in through the front door and went to our police clerk here at the window,” said Locust Grove Police Chief Derrick Austin about that day in August 2024.
Police said Joseph Quiros-Soto showed up at the police department and he said he needed to confess to a murder.
“Detectives spoke with him, escorted him into our interview room, he was placed in the interview room,” Chief Austin told Channel 2’s Candace McCowan.
Soto told a story about a night in August 1989 in Bayonne, New Jersey, that had come to weigh on him.
“He told the detective he and a co-conspirator were paid to travel from New York to New Jersey. They were given a sum of money and a photograph to commit a murder,” said Chief Austin. “He had joined a church, a local church here, and had been speaking with the pastor, and his conscience had just gotten to him. And he thought the Lord was speaking to him that he needed to do what was right and confess to what he had done.”
It took time for prosecutors to find the file. Soto was allowed to go home in the meantime, and he came back in the following months for a second interview with detectives from New Jersey who took his DNA.
Hudson County prosecutors said DNA came back as a match for DNA found on the victim’s sweatpants.
Last week, 20 months after his confession and 37 years after the crime, Soto was arrested in Griffin.
Without his come to Jesus moment, “I think it would’ve remained a cold case and justice never would’ve been served,” said Austin.
But the case isn’t closed. Investigators are working to find the co-conspirator he mentioned in his statement.
As for Soto, investigators say his salvation won’t save him from justice.
“The power of the Lord, people make mistakes, they made bad decisions. They should be held accountable for those decisions,” Chief Austin said.
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