BAINBRIDGE – A Bainbridge man convicted of petty theft was forced to give a DNA sample to police. On Tuesday, that sample linked him to a 20-year-old Long Island murder.

Joey Bethea, 38, of 6 River St. in Bainbridge, was taken into custody on suspicion of second-degree murder at around 2 p.m. Tuesday after New York State Investigators arrested him at the Wagner-Nineveh sawmill where he worked.

The Nassau County Police Department reported that Bethea’s DNA matched a semen sample taken from the alleged murder victim, 22-year-old Dorothy LeConte. Police said LeConte, a Haitian immigrant, had been raped and murdered on June 14, 1989, when Bethea was 17 and also lived on Long Island.

Police said LeConte’s body was dumped near Hempstead High School and an autopsy later determined she had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death.

Bethea’s Bainbridge neighbors seemed surprised he had been charged with a murder.