JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Authorities in Jacksonville Thursday announced the arrest of a former U.S. Navy sailor in a 31-year-old cold case.

During a press conference, State Attorney Melissa Nelson announced the arrest of 52-year-old Michael Ziegler in connection to the 1994 murder of Tina Heins.

In 1994, Nelson said Tina was murdered and sexually assaulted. She was 20 years old, four months pregnant and newly married, Nelson said.

Just after 6 a.m. on April 17, 1994, police responded to Tina’s apartment in Jacksonville’s Mayport area, where they found her stabbed to death on her bed. Nelson said she had been stabbed 27 times.

Multiple areas of her apartment were set on fire afterward.

Nelson said Tina’s brother-in-law, Chad Heins, was asleep in the living room of the apartment at the time of Tina’s killing, and that he woke up when the fire broke out, extinguishing it, before finding Tina killed.

Nelson said Chad then called 911.

“The investigation and evidence at that time pointed only to Chad Heins,” Nelson said. “Chad’s brother and Tina’s husband, Jeremy Heins, was on-duty on a Navy ship at nearby NAS Mayport.”

Nelson stated Chad was convicted of Tina’s murder in 1996, then was sentenced to life in prison.

Then in the early-2000s, Nelson said new DNA technology came online that allowed law enforcement to test preserved evidence from Tina’s body and bed in “a way that had not been available” at the time of her murder.

After testing the evidence with the new advanced DNA technology, Nelson said a DNA profile of an unknown man emerged.

“DNA from under Tina’s nails, from hairs collected from her body, and from a semen stain on her sheets, were that of a man who was not her husband and was not her brother-in-law Chad,” Nelson said.

Nelson said the DNA profile was then uploaded into a national database. The DNA profile ran weekly in the database for years without a hit, Nelson said.

Additionally during this time, Nelson said investigators collected DNA samples from people associated in both “large ways and small ways” to Tina. However, the DNA samples did not match up with the DNA profile.

Then in 2007, based on DNA evidence, Nelson said, the state dismissed the case against Chad Heins. Although investigators continued their efforts, Nelson said the DNA profile remained unidentified for the next 15 years.

“In 2021, after the breakthrough in the Golden State killer case, we sent, at the recommendation of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, what little DNA remained in this case to a lab in Texas, whose work was known to be highly successful in the identification of individual profiles from minute amounts of DNA, which was the case here,” Nelson said. “A profile was developed, and the lab began genetic genealogy searches. Through genetic genealogy, the lab identified a likely match.”

Nelson said detectives and forensic experts then confirmed the match to Ziegler.

According to Nelson, Ziegler was stationed at Naval Station Mayport aboard USS Leyte Gulf in 1994.

“He was not a stranger to Tina Heins,” Nelson said. “Michael Ziegler was her husband Jeremy’s very close friend. In fact, he stood witness at their courthouse wedding just five months before Tina was killed.”

On Aug. 28, Nelson said Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi presented the case to a Duval County grand jury, who then indicted Ziegler on first-degree murder and sexual battery charges.

Nelson said Ziegler was then arrested without incident near his home in Covington, Ga., outside of Atlanta, on Sept. 4. He is now in Duval County Jail with no bond.