ARKANSAS (KNWA/KFTA) — A Texas man visiting Izard County in 2004 has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of 22-year-old Rebekah Gould.

William Alma Miller, 44, now a resident of Cottage Grove, Oregon was arrested Saturday night, November 7, by a Special Agent of the Arkansas State Police Criminal Investigation Division.

Miller was arrested in Lane County Oregon after the special agent assigned to the case learned Miller had returned from the Philippines.

Miller is being held in the Lane County jail in Eugene, Oregon pending an extradition hearing, according to ASP.

Gould’s body was found along the side of the road outside of Melbourne in Izard County, Arkansas, on September 27, 2004.

On the weekend of September 20, 2004, Gould came home from college in Northwest Arkansas to visit her boyfriend. 

Monday morning she drove him to work at the Melbourne Sonic before stopping by the Possum Trot Convenience Store.

“She was supposed to take a nap, get up later, go pick her sister up and they were going to drive back to school,” said a woman who did a podcast about the case in a 2018 interview with KNWA/FOX24.

Rebekah never showed up.

One week after she was last seen, a search party found Gould’s body down an embankment along Highway 9, according to ASP.

Gould was enrolled at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Fayetteville, and she was an aspiring journalist, according to family members.

Upon learning of the arrest, ASP Director Colonel Bill Bryant said, “The special agents assigned to this case never abandoned any hope of finding the necessary evidence and facts to lead them to a suspect and an arrest.  This case is a testament to the Criminal Investigation Division and the devotion the special agents assigned to the division possess in helping police and sheriff’s department across Arkansas with their toughest cases.”

*Note: Name corrected to William Alma (not Alama) Miller, confirmed with Eugene Oregon police.