Thirza Sweeten was a great-grandmother five times over, a woman who loved knitting, crocheting and Westerns.

A native of Manchester, England who moved to Paulsboro in the 1970s, the 79-year-old cancer survivor was a regular at Cowtown in Woodstown, and lived on a quiet corner in the borough.

So when she was found beaten to death in her gray bungalow at South Delaware and Jessup Streets in March in Gloucester County’s first murder of 2012, it shocked the neighborhood and set police and prosecutors on a hunt for her killer, as they scoured the area and interviewed dozens of people in the days following her death.