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On Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2022, David Anthony Pike appeared before Circuit Judge Honorable Steve Perryman and plead guilty to Murder, according to Sheriff Sid Lockhart. Pike was sentenced to 240 months (20 years)  in the Alabama Department of Corrections and is awaiting transfer to their custody.

Lockhart told VTN he is pleased that the family of Calvin Lee Irvin finally has closure. Lockhart was a road deputy in 1985 when Irvin was murdered and he says the department would receive various tips that Pike was seen throughout the area and then those tips went silent until Pike was located in Puerto Rico in 2019.

This year, Lockhart says went through a range of emotions. From losing Deputy J’Mar Able in the line of duty to seeing one of the county’s coldest cases finally close, he says the sentencing is bittersweet.

“You know, when you go from one extreme to the other, you have a deputy killed, and you know, that’s a very, very low point,” Lockhart said. “Now you have an [unsolved]  murder, we’re able to at least get it behind us before I retire. So it’s bittersweet; it’s great that we managed to get closure.”

Pike had been wanted since June 21, 1985, for the alleged beating and shooting of 23-year-old Calvin Lee Irvin in Chambers County. He wasn’t caught until January 2019, when he was arrested under the alias of  Stephen Williams Varner and charged with willfully and knowingly making false statements in a passport renewal application. The complaint was concerning inconsistencies with the passport renewal form since the real Varner died in Alabama at the age of 22.

On June 22, 1985, the body of a white male was discovered on Chambers County Road 84 just outside of LaFayette. The Chambers County Sheriff’s Office responded and learned it was Irvin who had been shot.

There had been rumors over the years of Pike being sighted in Chambers County, but he’d been able to elude law enforcement until three years ago.

“Those rumors were really going around when his grandparents died. He was close to them,” said Sheriff Sid Lockhart said. “We attended those funerals to see if he might show up, but we didn’t see him.”

According to previous reporting by The Valley Times-News, investigators developed Pike and King Albert Mayes as suspects and murder arrest warrants were obtained. After the two men were arrested, Pike made bond, but before being indicted, he fled the area. Mayes pled guilty and served out a term in prison.