A Roanoke grand jury has returned indictments in two unsolved killings and a rape from the mid-1980s that have been linked to the same suspect by DNA evidence.

William Ray Hagy Jr. is already serving a 50-year prison sentence for the rape of a 14-year-old girl in 1984. Roanoke prosecutors are aiming to prove that that crime was just one of a series committed by Hagy over a seven-month period.

The killings of Cindy McCray and Audrey West happened six months apart more than 20 years ago. Though both women were strangled, there’s no sign Roanoke authorities believed at the time that their cases were related.

McCray’s partially clothed body was found in November 1984 by the railroad tracks under the Interstate 581 overpass that goes over Campbell Avenue. The death of the 21-year-old woman attracted little media attention at the time.

The opposite is true of West, who was found in May 1985 by her ex-husband in her home on Walnut Avenue Southwest. When Stephen Urick discovered her body lying in her son’s bunk bed, she was naked and her wrists appeared to have been bound. The death of West, a 33-year-old socialite and former fashion model, set off a storm of speculation, and Urick lived under a cloud of suspicion for years.

But Roanoke Commonwealth’s Attorney Donald Caldwell says that recent DNA matches have exonerated Urick and shown that these two cold cases were connected all along – by a suspect who has been in prison since 1986.

Caldwell emphasized that the new evidence has cleared Urick of any involvement in West’s death.

The grand jury indicted Hagy on a charge of murder in McCray’s slaying, and charges of rape and murder in the killing of West. The grand jury also indicted Hagy on charges of rape and abduction with intent to defile in an October 1984 sexual assault on a woman who at the time was 17 years old.

Hagy, who lived in Southeast Roanoke at the time, was jailed for the attack and charged with rape and sodomy. But prosecutors dropped the charges after the girl didn’t come to court, Caldwell said.

The woman now lives in Oregon, the prosecutor said.

According to court evidence, three weeks after the attack on the 17-year-old, Hagy abducted a 14-year-old girl at knifepoint as she walked along Williamson Road, forced her to perform oral sex and raped her. At first, the girl was unable to identify her attacker, who called himself “Ray.” But in July 1985, eight months after the attack, she spotted Hagy in Fallon Park, recognized him and reported him to police.

McCray’s body was discovered just nine days after the 14-year-old was raped, and West was killed two months before Hagy was arrested.

At Hagy’s trial for the attack on the 14-year-old, a Roanoke jury sentenced him to 50 years in prison for sodomy and rape. At the time Virginia had not yet abolished parole. He became eligible for parole in 1994 but remains incarcerated at Red Onion State Prison, with a release date scheduled for 2011.