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Prosecutors announced this week that the alleged killer of Patricia Carnahan, a woman who was beaten, strangled, and left for dead over 40 years ago, has been brought to justice.
Carnahan was killed in September 1979 at a South Lake Tahoe campground and was buried under a grave marking that simply stated “Unidentified Female,” according to the El Dorado District Attorney’s Office.
The cold case was solved thanks to a rape kit from an unrelated crime decades later, which led to the arrest of Harold Carpenter, according to prosecutors. Evidence, including a rape kit, was collected at the Tahoe crime scene, which provided a DNA sample.
The murder probe was revived in 2015 by the district attorney’s cold case homicide unit, in which the body was exhumed and detectives put photos of the victim’s jewelry in a newspaper. Family members came forward to identify a pendant worn by Carnahan, and the remains were given to loved ones for a proper burial.
Recently, authorities in Washington tested a rape kit from a 1994 case as part of an effort to clear out a backlog of rape kits and added the results to a national database, prosecutors said.
The DNA from that Washington victim matched up with DNA evidence collected from Carnahan’s death, leading to the arrest of Carpenter.
The 63-year-old suspect is currently in Spokane County Jail on a fugitive charge before his expected extradition to California on a murder warrant. The Washington rape case won’t go forward because the statute of limitations ran out and the victim is now dead.
El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson said in a statement, “Because of the tireless dedication of our investigators, she was identified and returned to her family.
Now due to multi-state collaboration by numerous agencies, her killer will finally be held accountable.” Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson added that the cold case arrest shows the need to test every sexual assault kit and put the DNA profiles of them into the federal database.
»Harold Carpenter, killer of Patricia Carnahan from a cold case since 1979 finally arrested«
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