DNA from deceased prison inmate's old RAZOR helps solve cold-case murders of two women raped and killed in California 40 years ago
By Snejana Farberov
Daily Mail
April 22, 2019
DNA evidence collected from an old razor has linked the cold-case rape and murder of two women in California to a convict who died of cancer in a Washington prison nearly four decades after the killings.
San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said at a news conference last week that DNA taken from the shaving tool belonging to one-time fugitive from justice Arthur Rudy Martinez recently matched DNA left by the suspect in two unsolved killings in Atascadero in the late 1970s.
The body of 30-year-old Jane Morton Antunez was found in the back seat of her car on a dirt road on November 18, 1977. She had been bound, sexually assaulted and her throat had been cut.
Antunez was divorced and left behind a daughter, who was 13 years old at the time of her mother's death, as San Luis Obispo Tribune reported.
Less than two months later, 28-year-old hospital worker Patricia Dwyer was found raped and stabbed to death in her home on Del Rio Road on January 11, 1978. Like in Antunez's case, Dwyer's arms were tied behind her back.
Martinez moved to Washington from Atascadero shortly after Dwyer’s slaying. He later was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of two rapes and multiple robberies in Washington, but Martinez escaped from prison in 1994, Parkinson said.
Martinez returned to California and lived in Fresno under an alias for more than 20 years on the lam.
He turned himself in on his Washington convictions after getting diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2014 so he could get medical treatment in prison.
He died around two months later at the age of 65 in the prison in Spokane.
At the time of the murders, Martinez was working as a welder in Atascadero and was on parole for convictions of attempted murder and rape.
At one point, he had been considered as a potential suspect in the killings, but there was no evidence at the time linking him to either crime scene, Parkinson said.
Crime scene investigators collected biological evidence from Antunez's car and Dwyer's home, but there was no DNA technology in use at the time.
The sheriff’s office reopened the 41-year-old cold case in 2017 and decided to test Martinez’s DNA after one of his family members was connected to the case through a familial DNA search.
The relative's DNA ended up in the system because of a prior arrest unrelated to the cold-case murders.
Investigators then contacted Martinez's former girlfriend, who still had some personal items that once belonged to him in her possession, including the razor, which was tested for DNA and produced a match.
It remains unclear if Martinez, who lived in Fresno, knew the victims before he killed them.
‘Our hearts go out to the families of the victims and are hopeful the resolution to these cases brings them some closure,’ Parkinson said in a statement.
No comments:
Post a Comment