Riverside County man convicted in 33-year-old murder case

A Riverside County man was convicted Tuesday in a 33-year-old murder case in which a woman was strangled in her Hemet home.

Shelby Shamblin, 50, was found guilty by a jury of one count of first-degree murder in the slaying of Elizabeth Crossman, 67, according to a statement from the Riverside County district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors said Shamblin faces a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.

Shamblin, who was 17 at the time of the January 1980 killing and the stepson of an employee of the Crossman’s, was hired by Crossman’s husband to do odd jobs around the home.

Investigators at the time interviewed Shamblin, who told them he was a runaway and had not been at the Crossman home in the days before the murder, prosecutors said. At that point, there wasn’t enough evidence to link him to Crossman’s death.

In 2002, DNA evidence collected by Hemet police was added to a database, but it wasn’t until 2011 that a match was found. Shamblin’s DNA was entered into the database for the first time after he was arrested on a drug charge in Homeland in 2010.

He was arrested in connection with Crossman’s death in February 2011.

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