Expect to take extra time if you go to the Columbia County Courthouse next week: Officials are enacting extra security measures for the three-day preliminary hearing that starts Monday in the 1980 killing of Marilyn McIntyre.

Curtis Forbes, 51, of rural Randolph, faces life in prison on a charge of first-degree murder in the March 11, 1980, stabbing death of McIntyre, 18, a family friend.

Measures include a walk-through metal detector and, possibly, an X-ray machine for bags and other items similar to those used at airports.

No specific threats have been made regarding the hearings, according to Detective Lt. Roger Brandner of the Columbia County Sheriff's Department.

The use of the security equipment is a precaution, according to Brandner, who said officials noticed that earlier hearings with Forbes attracted a large crowd.

"It's a pretty high profile case," Brandner said. "We're just providing a measure of prevention."

The sheriff's department acquired the X-ray machine two weeks ago from U.S. Marshals Service; the machine had been used at the federal courthouse in Madison. Such equipment is rotated about every five years, said Lt. Doug Jarzynski, who acquired the machine for the department.

The temporary security measures will help to bring Columbia County's courthouse up to standards - for three days - that it should have on a daily basis, but cannot because of money and staffing considerations, Brandner said.

"Often something has to happen for (such) measures to be taken" on a permanent basis, Jarzynski said.

Authorities said McIntyre was killed during the early morning hours of March 11, 1980, at her apartment in Columbus as her husband, Lane McIntyre, was at work. An autopsy report said she was bludgeoned, strangled and stabbed.

Forbes was arrested in March by Columbia County Sheriff's Department detectives after prosecutors said DNA evidence connected him to McIntyre's death. He remains in the Columbia County Jail on $450,000 cash bail.

The hearing next week, scheduled to last Monday through Wednesday, is a preliminary, or probable cause, hearing that involves testimony by witnesses and other evidence in the case.

At a preliminary hearing, a judge will decide if the evidence and testimony shows that it is more likely than not that a crime was committed and that the defendant committed the crime.

If the judge determines that there is enough evidence for the case to continue, the judge will bind over the defendant for further proceedings. If the judge determines that the prosecution has not met the probable cause standard, the charge can be dismissed based upon a lack of evidence.

Defense attorney Robert A. Christensen of Madison, at a June bond hearing, questioned the strength of evidence in the criminal complaint.

The evidence listed in the complaint is misrepresenting and misleading because of what is and is not included, Christensen said at the hearing.

Christensen questioned evidence that he asserts only tenuously connects Forbes to the crime scene, if at all.