NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Channel 4 News has learned that police are searching for a possible connection between Jerome Barrett and Marcia Trimble.

Barrett was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the 1975 slaying of Vanderbilt student Sarah Des Prez. Des Prez was found dead by her father and brother at her apartment.

Police confirmed that the DNA evidence used to make that arrest is being used to determine whether Barrett may be connected in the slaying of 9-year-old Marcia Trimble three weeks earlier.

Trimble’s case is one of Nashville’s most notorious unsolved cases.

She was reported missing from her Green Hills home on Feb. 25, 1975, while selling Girl Scout cookies three weeks after Des Prez was killed.

The connection is a possibility that Metro police said they are looking at.

According to information obtained by Channel 4, in 1994, evidence from the Trimble case was sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

There were at least two DNA samples from the scene, but there has never been any kind of match.

Investigators said they want to know if either of those samples matches Barrett. A DNA sample would have been collected from Barrett while he was in prison.

Trimble's mother said on Wednesday that she knows nothing about the possible link.

"It's absolutely news to me,” she said.

Barrett has a history of sexual-related charges and was on parole for a sex offense when he was arrested on suspicion of raping a Belmont student the same month Marcia Trimble disappeared.

Barrett had been in jail until 2002 when he was released on parole.

Retired Metro Homicide Officer Sherman Nickens said he was cautiously optimistic.

“It's never probably a week goes by that someone doesn't ask about it or remember. It was a very emotional time for the police department, for the community, because, you know, we didn't know what had went on out there, and it's just, I hope they can solve it,” he said.