Jurors debating the fate of 62-year-old David Winfield Mitchell have called it quits for tonight and will resume deliberations first thing Tuesday morning.
The jury deliberated for about three hours before deciding to take a break at about 9 p.m.
Mitchell is accused of the beating, rape and strangulation killing of Sheila Jo Harris, 18, in Carson City.
Harris had just moved into a Lompa Lane apartment when her battered body was discovered on Jan. 6, 1982, by her mother and a family friend.
Mitchell, the groundskeeper at the apartment complex where Harris lived, was a suspect, but charges filed against him were eventually dropped for lack of evidence.
A DNA match in 1999, and Mitchell's extradition in 2006 from the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad, have brought the case forward in 2007.