A grand jury has indicted a man currently incarcerated in Utah in the killing of a 19-year-old woman whose severed arms were found in a trash bin five years ago.
Authorities never found the body of Diana Dawn Vicari.On Thursday, a Pima County grand jury indicted Lemuel Prion, 32, in the October 1992 disappearance and slaying of Vicari, a Pima Community College student at the time of her death.
Her severed arms were discovered in a trash bin near downtown Tucson two days after she disappeared.
"I'd basically given up," Vicari's sister Debbie said after Thursday's indictment. "I think this will finally make things happen, to bring it to a closure."
"I would hope for the death penalty," said Vicari's mother, Kathy Pashos. "I think for a while now (Prion) has been a suspect . . . We didn't know him. It was a name we first heard through the police."
The grand jury charged Prion with first-degree murder and related counts of sexual assault, aggravated assault and kidnapping.
Prion has a long record of criminal convictions - including the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Tucson - and has been a suspect in the Vicari case for several years.
Prion is serving time at the Utah State Prison for felony aggravated assault, violation of a drug stamp and possession of a dangerous weapon.
No hearing dates have been set, and the Pima County Attorney's Office declined comment on whether it had begun extradition proceedings.
Tucson police last year said Prion first surfaced as a suspect when his own father called, saying he was concerned about things his son had said and that, "Lemuel may have committed a very terrible crime when he was in Tucson."
Prion lived within two blocks of where Vicari's car was found after she disappeared.
In the mid-1980s, Prion was convicted of raping a woman in South Carolina and served time in prison before being released on probation.
He also has a record in Tucson for choking and raping a 15-year-old girl and served five years in prison before being released in 1991.