A 63yearold man has been arrested in California for the murder of a woman more than 40 years ago.
In September 1979, a body was found at a campground in the city of South Lake Tahoe. According to police, the female victim was beaten and choked to death.
At the time, agents collected a “rape kit,” a set of DNA samples from the woman who may have suffered sexual violence. However, she was buried without identification.
In 2015, the El Dorado County Homicide Division reopened the case and the body was exhumed. After photos of her belongings were published in the press, family members recognized the victim as Patricia Carnahan.
She was reburied, but no suspects had been charged as of this year, when Washington state police examined samples from a 1994 rape victim and found DNA matching that in Patricia’s “rape kit.”
The killer and perpetrator was identified as Harold Carpenter, according to information from the El Dorado District Attorney’s Office to the portal UPI News.
“After testing the kit, the CODIS system the FBI’s combined DNA index system recently discovered that DNA collected from the victim in Washington also matched DNA collected from Patricia Carnahan, leading to the suspect in her murder identified as Harold Carpenter,” the institution said.
Prosecutor Vern Pierson said the Carnahan murder is one of the oldest ever solved by the county agency using a sample from a “rape kit.”
“Ms Carnahan was buried in a pottery field under the headstone of an ‘unidentified woman’. Due to the tireless efforts of our investigators, she was identified and returned to her family,” Pierson said in a statement.
“Now, thanks to multistate and multiagency cooperation, her killer will finally be brought to justice,” he added.