A Texas man was arrested Tuesday more than three decades after a 15-year-old girl vanished in California, according to the Modesto Police Department. The Van Zandt County Sheriff’s Department in Texas apprehended Raymond Lewis Stafford at his home on an arrest warrant obtained by Modesto authorities last week. Stafford has now been booked into the Van Zandt County jail on charges of murder with special circumstances. On April 25, 1986, Susan Robin Bender disappeared and was reportedly last seen getting into a green van at the Greyhound bus depot in Modesto. It is not known how police were able to identify Stafford as a potential suspect, but the investigation was reopened in 2021 in hopes of using new technology to crack the cold case.
