Kay Myers drove throughout the night from her home in Nashville, Tenn., to thank the St. Cloud Police Department for solving the 31-year-old murder of her sister, Norma Page.

Page, 28, a reverend's wife and mother of two sons who were present during her murder, was killed on the first day of summer in 1979 in her children's bedroom after giving a stranger a drink of water.“Norma said (St. Cloud) was the best place in the world to raise a family, it’s so safe,” Myers said tearfully at Thursday morning's press conference at St. Cloud City Hall. “The Bible says, 'Just give a cup of water in my name,' and she did that and that cost her life."

The stranger, Steve Herman Bronson Jr., 62, confessed to Page's murder after speaking with detectives for several hours. He was arrested and charged with first-degree murder Wednesday afternoon. He is being held without bond at the Osceola County Jail.

SCPD reopened the case in August 2009 after Myers, with the support of her and Page's two other sisters and a cousin, wrote a letter to detectives urging them to take another look at the evidence. Page said she had taken “copious” notes throughout the years, including newspaper clippings, and delivered notebooks full of the information to various law enforcement agencies, including SCPD.

Norma Page was outside the Church of the Nazarene's parsonage, 1015 Tennessee Ave., where her husband was the reverend, hanging clothes on a clothesline when Bronson told detectives he was walking by and asked her for a drink of water.

Her husband was attending a church camp in Leesburg at the time of the murder.

It was then, according to accounts in one of the Osceola News-Gazette's predecessors, St. Cloud News, Bronson forced Page drive to the Sun Bank in St. Cloud to cash one of her husband's checks.

Once they returned to the home, according to the arrest affidavit released Thursday, Page's two sons were forced and locked into their parents' bedroom while Page was taken into her son's room.

At some point, the boys were able to escape the home and notified a neighbor about what was happening to their mother. The neighbor then contacted police but by then the suspect had already fled.

Page was found nude from the waist down on a bed in her children's room with her feet tied together, her hands bound behind her back and her head wrapped in a towel or blanket.

Page was struck in the head multiple times with a glass ketchup bottle until it shattered. She was stabbed 34 times, according to the autopsy performed by Dr. Thomas F. Hegert, including four times in the left lung, which caused extensive hemorrhaging.

The cause of death was extensive blood loss secondary to the multiple stab wounds of her neck and chest.

Detectives saved several pieces of blood-covered clothing and materials, items that were discovered to have a man's blood on them. Bronson's DNA was found on the inside of a white and blue bathing suit top left in a bathroom sink; on a toddler's T-shirt found near the boys' beds; and a hand towel located in the patio area outside the Page home.

Bronson’s DNA had been on file with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement since 1989 and it was the database those samples are kept in that allowed DNA Labs International, based in Deerfield Beach, to make the match in October.

St. Cloud police obtained an arrest warrant for Bronson on Tuesday. Members of the St. Cloud Police Department met Wednesday with Bronson, who was cooperative, and arrested him at Avante at St. Cloud nursing home, where he was receiving treatment for a series of strokes he suffered in recent years.

Police are currently investigating the possibility of a second person’s involvement in the crime and are seeking information about a Lester J. Bass, better know as “Jay,” who resides out of state.

Anyone with additional information on the crime is urged to contact the St. Cloud Police Department Criminal Investigation Unit at 407-891-6765 or 407-891-6752.

See the Jan. 6 edition of the News-Gazette to read

the full story or follow updates at www.aroundosceola.com.