Son killed following discovery, mom says
James Alan Horton was beaten, sexually assaulted and shot to death in 1992 after he caught his superior aboard a Navy minesweeper having sex with another male sailor, Horton's mother said Thursday.
Rosaline Horton said investigators told her that from Day 1 they have been working under the theory that her 22-year-old son's discovery was connected to his death, and that Thomas Solheim, his superior aboard the Exultant, was the lead suspect.
Solheim, 53, was arrested this week. He is one of two men charged with Horton's murder.
Late Thursday, the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office arrested a woman, Konnie Jan Glidden, 38, of Goose Creek on a murder charge in connection with the case.
Glidden is being held at the Hill- Finklea Detention Center and has a bond hearing scheduled for 7 tonight. Authorities provided no more details on her arrest.
Naval Criminal Investigative Service representatives will neither confirm nor deny the possible motive. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that an official with knowledge of the investigation confirmed Horton's account that the discovery was connected to her son's death.
Horton said several crew members on board started talking to investigators as soon as her son's body was found bound and shot in a watery ditch near Summerville.
"All of these people came forward and said, 'If you want to get anybody, get (Solheim),' " Horton said. "He's the one who's been under suspicion all of these years."
No one had seen James Horton and Solheim together that night, she said.
Investigators got their break in the case late last week when they arranged to talk to another former sailor, Charles Andrew Welty, in his hometown of Missoula, Mont. Welty confessed that he, along with co-defendants, beat, sexually assaulted and killed James Horton, according to an arrest affidavit charging him with murder.
Authorities arrested Solheim Tuesday night as he was walking near his mother's house in Suffolk County, N.Y., authorities said. He was scheduled to appear in court Wednesday, but the hearing was postponed when he had seizures.
Horton, 70, said her son never told her what he saw, but she and her daughter knew something was wrong on his last visit to his home in Sherburne, N.Y. He was reluctant to return to Charleston, they said.
"He hesitated about it," his mother said. "He said, 'I have to get off that minesweeper' because too many things were going on he didn't like."
Her son never would have told on anybody, she said.
"He wouldn't squeal," Horton said of her son. "I think one of them was afraid that he would."
Horton was stationed at the Charleston Naval Base while serving on the Exultant. His family said he had been in the Navy for five years and had signed on for five more years just before his death.
Ed Buice, public affairs officer for the NCIS, said Thursday that Solheim and Horton served on the same ship and knew each other.
He said he could neither confirm nor deny the possible motive.
