2 Arrested in 7-Year-Old Drug-Related Homicide : Investigation: Key witnesses were found this week to the 1985 stabbing death of Scott Raymond Hall, 20, in Garden Grove.

Seven years after a young man was stabbed to death trying to buy cocaine, detectives have arrested two people on suspicion of his murder, police said Thursday.

Key witnesses were found this week who corroborated physical evidence and statements gathered since the 1985 killing of Scott Raymond Hall, 20, according to Officer Ben Sanchez.

The recent developments, which police declined to specify, ended in the arrests of Brenda Kaye Strahan, 35, in Lancaster on Wednesday noon and Jesse Albert Menchaca, 37, outside his home in Buena Park about nine hours later.

“We got really excited,” said the victim’s mother, Norma Hall, about hearing the news Thursday morning at her home in Utah. “We wanted to call everybody and let them know. After seven years, we thought the case was gone, forgotten.”

“It’s so nice to get somebody from years back,” Sanchez said. “The suspects were in and around that area all the time and were known to the drug crowd.”

For Sanchez, the arrests were a satisfying development in a case he has been working on since October, 1991. Menchaca and Strahan are being held in lieu of $250,000 bail each at Orange County Jail.

“The physical evidence was always there, but there were a lot of things that had to come into play before we could pick (the suspects) up,” Sanchez said.

Hall had been living with his parents in Fountain Valley when he drove with a friend on Dec. 18, 1985, to Buena Clinton, an area of low-cost housing and high crime rates in southeastern Garden Grove then known as the county’s worst slum.

About 3:30 a.m., he was stabbed in an apartment complex in the 12000 block of Keel Avenue. He ran to a courtyard as his friend flagged down a passing patrol car. He died at the scene.

For Hall’s parents, the arrests have helped relieve the pain that began the day they learned that not only had their son been murdered, but that he was a drug user.

“At first, I didn’t believe it,” said Norma Hall, 56, her voice breaking over the phone. “And then afterward, I was angry. I was hurt. And I was wishing there was some way to get rid of drugs.”

She described her son as tall, about 200 pounds, very outgoing and active in a variety of sports in school.

Learning of her son’s drug involvement was “a shock,” Hall said. “He didn’t have . . . the regular symptoms of a drug user. He worked, he had his friends and stuff, he didn’t sleep all day and stay out all night, so I was surprised.”

A year after the death, she and her retired husband moved out of Fountain Valley in search of a restful, peaceful place, Hall said.

Just when the couple thought the murder had been forgotten, Sanchez telephoned.

“I just can’t tell you how great he really has been. Every time he called there was better news,” Hall said. “It’s really renewed our faith in the justice system.”

The couple and their older son, Ken Hall Jr., 30, plan to attend the trial for Menchaca and Strahan, she said.