UPDATE (2:37 p.m. Oct. 31, 2023): News 5’s initial report excluded defendant Alvin Ray Allen’s first and middle name. In addition, the story’s first version misspelled “casual” relationship as “causal.”

MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — A jury is now deliberating in the second trial of Alvin Ray Allen, a Mobile man accused of raping and murdering a 19-year-old girl in 1980.

Sept. 11, 1980, 19-year-old Sandra Williams was found dead in Toulminville at the end of Clementine Court, which is now a cul-de-sac, nearly 8 miles from her apartment complex on Azalea Road.

She had lived at that apartment complex for three months.

Williams was raped and stabbed several times, according to investigators. The case remained cold for 39 years until Allen was arrested in 2019 when DNA linked Allen to the case.

Allen’s first murder trial, in 2020, ended in a mistrial after the jury could not reach a verdict.

Closing statements in the second trial began with the state. Prosecutors told the jury that they had proven a motive, intent, opportunity, consciousness of guilt and DNA evidence.

The defense said that there was not enough evidence to link Allen to the murder of Williams, including Allen’s DNA found on the crotch of Williams’s pants when she was found.

The defense said that the two were in a casual relationship and that the DNA could have come from a previous hangout.

The lack of evidence includes a rape kit that had been lost by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences.

Prosecutors said that they wish they had access to the rape kit.

The defense also related this case to the book “To Kill a Mockingbird” because a black male is accused of raping and murdering a white female.

Prosecutors said that this comparison did not relate to this case in any way.