KINGFIELD – Police and federal agents swarmed an Indian Stream Road inn Tuesday where they arrested a Portland man accused of torturing and strangling a boy in Indiana nearly three decades ago.

David Bruce Bowen, 44, was arrested about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday in the slaying of Kenneth “Butch” Conrick, who was snatched while walking home from school in October 1979. An arrest warrant was issued for Bowen on Monday in Lake County, Ind., charging him with murder.

Agents from the Southern Maine Violent Crime Task Force and detectives from Lake County captured Bowen after watching him for the past six months. He was taken to the Franklin County Jail in Farmington, where he was being held without bail Tuesday night.

Investigators from the Lake County Sheriff’s Department said advances in technology enabled them match Bowen to the crime through DNA evidence. When Conrick was killed, they said, DNA testing was primitive.

“In 1979, the technology wasn’t there,” Bernard Carter, a Lake County prosecutor told a reporter at an ABC affiliate in Gary, Ind.

However, the Lake County forensic team collected and preserved evidence in the killing, including body fluids found on the dead boy’s skin and the cord used to kill him.

That evidence ultimately led to Tuesday’s arrest, police said.

Bowen is expected to be arraigned in a Farmington court today or Thursday on a fugitive from justice charge, Chief Deputy John Clark of the U.S. Marshals Service in Maine said Tuesday night. From there, extradition proceedings would begin, he said.

Police said Bowen could be returned to Indiana within a week to face prosecution in the slaying of the boy.

Clark described Bowen’s demeanor Tuesday as “subdued” as he was taken into custody.

“He had been contacted over the years about the case,” Clark said, yet, “I think it came as a surprise when this happened to him (Tuesday).”

Bowen, single and childless, according to Clark, has lived in Maine for 25 years and was working as a painter for a contractor in Portland. According to the Kingfield Daily Bulldog newspaper, Bowen was working at the Poland Spring bottling facility building project.

He lived at 218 Park St. in Portland, Clark said, but was staying in Kingfield for part of the week while completing the job there.

According to investigators in Lake County, Conrick disappeared while walking home from school in Gary, Ind., on Oct. 15, 1979.

After a two-week search by police, family members, friends and volunteers, the child’s body was found in a patch of woods in an unincorporated area of Lake County.

The boy was nude when his body was discovered, with the exception of socks covering his feet, police said. His left foot was tied to a tree with a shoestring, and his wrists were similarly bound.

The boy’s body had been mutilated and some of his body parts removed, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Five of his front teeth had been knocked out from blunt-force trauma, and a blue cord was found around his neck.

The Lake County Coroner’s Office determined that the immediate cause of death was asphyxia and choking.

At the time Conrick was killed, Bowen was a 16-year-old paperboy who lived near Conrick, police said. Years after the killing, police received an anonymous tip suggesting Bowen might be the killer.

In 1992, police tracked down Bowen’s sister, who provided them with DNA samples. With that, police were able to compare evidence from the crime scene with Bowen. It was a match, but there was little police could do with that lead at the time.

“We just felt all the while that we had the right suspect,” retired Detective Sgt. Ed Swike, from the Lake County Sheriff’s Department told ABC. “But of course at the time, it was a juvenile and the parents have gotten an attorney and wouldn’t let us talk to (Bowen) anymore. But we pursued it. We thought about the case for years.”

Investigators reopened the case three years ago, relocated the sister and took a DNA sample from her that showed enough similarities to genetic material found on the boy and his clothing at the scene to link Bowen to the crime.

This summer, Lake County investigators contacted police in Portland, requesting assistance in confirming that Bowen was still living in Maine.

The case was handed over to the Southern Maine Violent Crime Task Force, which comprises officers from seven police agencies as well as the U.S. Marshals Service.

For the past six months, task force members worked closely with investigators from Indiana to keep tabs on Bowen until a criminal case could be filed in that state, police said.

On Monday, an arrest warrant was issued in Lake County, charging Bowen with the murder of Kenny Conrick. Federal agents tracked Bowen in Kingfield where he was working as a member of a painting crew.

“He was just up there for a couple of days,” said Clark.

Although police in Maine only recently got involved in the investigation, the horrific nature of the killing made it more personal for the officers in this state.

“It was a terrible crime,” Clark said. “Hopefully, this will bring some measure of closure for the family and the people involved in the investigation.”

In Lake County, Ind., police announced the arrest early Tuesday afternoon.

“For Kenneth Conrick, I pray and hope that his spirit is here with us today,” said Lake County Sheriff Roy Dominguez, “that he knows we never gave up on him.”