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Despite extensive work by original case detectives, for decades the homicide of James B. Bryant went unsolved, but 33 years later his family knows who killed “Uncle Johnny” and they finally have closure.
John Bryant was a good man; he had moved to Phoenix from West Virginia and found work, first as a miner, and then as a carpenter. On the night of February 9, 1978 at around 8 p.m. Bryant was running errands for his family and was going to stop to gas up his truck. The 57 year-old husband and father never made it home. He was the victim of a robbery and was stabbed to death in the roadway at 321 East Clarendon.
During the spring of 2011, Phoenix cold case squad detectives reopened the Bryant case. As they investigated, they took evidence obtained by the original detectives and submitted it for testing. In 33 years, technology made amazing advances and through the new process, a forensic hit pointed them to Manuel Corona who was already serving time in the Arizona Department of Corrections on unrelated charges.
Mr. Corona, now a 71 year-old man, was arrested while in the custody of ADOC/Tucson and booked into Maricopa County Jail on February 2, 2012. He was charged with the murder of John B. Bryant.
Charlene Bryant spoke to gathered media during a press briefing, “I promised my mother-in-law just before she passed away in 1999 that we would never give up.” Even after losing her husband, Bryant’s son, in 2005, she continued to look for closure of the murder. “This means so much to our family. I have a son who never got to know his grandfather…other family members who are scattered across the country have always wanted to know what happened to their Uncle Johnny.”
Cold Case squad Sergeant Troy Hillman and Detective J.J. Alberta stood alongside Phoenix Crime Lab personnel and explained how Acting Phoenix Police Chief Joe Yahner worked to ensure that grant monies from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Department of Justice would afford the squad to invest in solving these types of crimes. To date, the squad has solved 22 cold cases. Hillman pointed out that “…it is all about teamwork and new technology. Detective Alberta wasn’t even born when Mr. Bryant was murdered!”