Pro basketball player's family 'grateful' after mother's cold case murder solved: police

Fox News host Laura Ingraham highlights several cold cases the FBI has yet to solve on ‘The Ingraham Angle.’

Orlando Johnson, whose mother was murdered when he was just a year old, has kept her memory alive as he climbed the basketball ladder to the NBA.

His social media posts have paid tribute to Vicki Johnson, whose cold case killing confounded her family and community since 1991.

Now that his mother’s murder has been solved after 32 years, Johnson’s family is "grateful" for the answer to the devastating mystery, Seaside (California) Police Chief Nick Borges told Fox News Digital.

The 6-foot-5-inch player — now 34, the same age as his mother when she was killed — is in his 11th season of professional basketball.

CALIFORNIA POLICE SOLVE 32-YEAR COLD CASE WITH DNA FOUND UNDER VICTIM'S FINGERNAILS

Orlando Johnson of Russia's Unics Kazan prepares to shoot before a game against Maccabi Fox Tel Aviv in 2016. Last week, police in Seaside, California, identified his mother's killer. (Roman Kruchinin/Euroleague Basketball via Getty Images)

Johnson was drafted out of UC Santa Barbara by the Sacramento Kings in 2012, traded to the Indiana Pacers and spent stints in Milwaukee, Phoenix and New Orleans in his four-season-long NBA career. Internationally, he has played for teams in China, Russia, Australia, Taiwan, Bosnia and the Philippines.

Johnson currently plays for Uruguay's Club Atlético Aguada, commonly known simply as "Aguada."

But the seasoned player came from harrowing beginnings. Six years after his mother's death, a space heater in Johnson's childhood home ignited Christmas decorations, claiming the lives of his great-grandmother, aunt and two cousins while he visited his half brother, according to the Monterey County