Salina ? After nearly 20 years of being a prime suspect, a Kansas man has been charged in the rape and murder of a Salina woman.

Robert Henry Lackey, 51, was charged Tuesday in Saline County Court with first-degree murder and rape in the December 1982 rape and killing of Sara Ann Brecheisen, whose body was found in her Salina home.

Lackey was arrested in February in York, Ala., where he had been living in a motel. His bond was set at $2 million. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for April 12.

Prosecutors have said a re-examination of the case last December produced enough evidence to charge Lackey. Saline County Prosecutor Ellen Mitchell declined to elaborate on the new evidence Tuesday.

Lackey, who was known as Robert Bruce Moore when he lived in Salina, was a cook at the Gospel Mission in December 1982, when Brecheisen was killed. She was a volunteer at the mission.

Lackey disappeared from his Salina home on Dec. 11, 1982, about the time Brecheisen’s body was discovered.

Her body was found by her boyfriend and another man in the closet of her mobile home in southwest Salina. She had been dead for several days when her body was found.

Darrell Wilson, who was assistant police chief at the time of the killing and later served as Saline County sheriff, said Lackey was a suspect from the beginning, but law officers couldn’t find him.

The FBI and law enforcement agencies in several states had tracked Lackey as he hid under assumed names in Oregon, Florida, Georgia, Kansas and Alabama.

Police said Lackey’s history of violent sexual offenses dates at least 30 years. He was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape in Raleigh County, N.C., in 1970 and sentenced to 15 years, but was paroled in 1973.