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Whisper

#byefelicia
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Claire Hough was murdered on Torrey Pines State Beach in 1984. Her case was just solved through DNA​
[....]
case of a Rhode Island teenager who was found dead while visiting her grandparents in San Diego about 30 years ago was solved through DNA evidence
[....]
The brutal 1984 murder of 14-year-old Claire Hough at Torrey Pines State Beach was allegedly committed by two suspects — who are also both dead
[....]
The first, Ronald Clyde Tatro, 70, had an extensive criminal history of sexual assault, according to cops. He was killed in a boating accident in 2011
[....]
The other suspect, 62-year-old Kevin Charles Brown, committed suicide Tuesday at Cuyamaca State Park in California after he knew he was being pursued by detectives.

Brown, a San Diego Police Department criminologist who retired in 2002, had been interviewied and knew he would be arrested soon. He had no criminal history, and he had no role in reviewing evidence from the crime scene
[...]
It was unclear how the two suspects knew each other.

Police and investigators have spent three decades poring over records and scouring the beach for any hints of how the young girl died.

“Obviously we’re very gratified,” said homicide unit Lt. Paul Rorrison. “It’s what we strive for. We work for the victims and the family. These cases don’t just go away.”

Hough’s case was eerily similar to another 1978 slaying of 15-year-old Barbara Nantais, who was also killed near the same spot
[...]
Both girls were strangled with one breast mutilated, and both had sand pushed into their mouths.

Police said they do not believe the cases are linked.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...nd-girl-solved-dna-evidence-article-1.1985930

San Diego police solve 1984 killing of teen at Torrey Pines State Beach
The brutal 1984 killing of a teenager at Torrey Pines State Beach has apparently been solved through DNA and an extensive investigation, the San Diego Police Department announced
[...]
Both suspects in the strangulation and mutilation of 14-year-old Claire Hough are dead,
[...]
Both were linked through DNA.
The teenager was in San Diego visiting her grandparents from her home in Rhode Island when she was found dead.
One of the suspects, Ronald Clyde Tatro, 67, was killed in a boating accident in 2011 in Tennessee. He had an extensive criminal history of sexual assault
[....]
The other suspect, Kevin Charles Brown, 62, a retired San Diego Police Department criminologist, was found dead Tuesday at Cuyamaca State Park east of San Diego. His death was ruled a suicide.

Brown had been interviewed and knew he was a suspect in the killing and would soon be arrested, Rorrison said. He had no criminal history and an investigation showed that he had no role in processing evidence from the 1984 crime scene
[...]
Rorrison declined to discuss any relationship between Tatro and Brown. Brown retired in 2002 after 20 years as a civilian employee with the department.

Police do not consider the 1984 slaying to be linked to a similar crime in 1978, when Barbara Nantais, 15, was killed near the spot
[...]
In both the 1978 and 1984 killings, the victim was strangled, sand was pushed into her mouth, and one of her breasts was mutilated,
[...]
In three decades, hundreds of police and other investigators combed the beach, pored through files and conducted interviews for possible leads
[...]
“Obviously we’re very gratified,” Rorrison said. “It’s what we strive for. We work for the victims and the family. These cases don’t just go away.”
A story in the San Diego Union shortly after the Aug. 24, 1984, killing reflected the paucity of clues at the crime scene.
[...]
Claire Hough's grandparents were unclear why she had walked to the beach that night.

“Boredom, perhaps, or the romance of the surf took the attractive teenager the several hundred yards to the beach one night last week,” the newspaper story said. "What the girl from Rhode Island found was death at the hands of someone who strangled her and left her body beneath an Old Highway 101 bridge.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-1984-killing-solved-20141023-story.html
 
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With a specific MO like that, in the same area, fairly close together time wise - I find it hard to believe that the two cases aren't connected.
 
With a specific MO like that, in the same area, fairly close together time wise - I find it hard to believe that the two cases aren't connected.

Unless they released details of the crime, and the new guys knew those details?? They both were criminologists, so maybe??
 
The one perp had DNA on file as a convicted felon. How did they find out about the criminologist guy that committed suicide and how did they come across info of his involvement and his DNA...since he didn't have a record. Curious to find out more facts about these two. Glad its been solved.
 
The wife needs a wake up call.
A second man also identified as a suspect, Ronald Clyde Tatro, is also dead, having drowned in an apparent boating accident in Tennessee in 2011.

Investigators said a 2012 test found both men’s DNA matched samples taken from the teen’s body.

[...]

“In a way, it doesn’t make any difference who killed her,” her father, Samuel Hough, said from his Rhode Island home. “She’s dead and there’s nothing we can do about that. The important thing for us is what she was and what she became — the fact that she was so positive, so rich, at the time that she died.”

But Brown’s widow accused police of a bungled investigation, saying this is a clear case of DNA contamination because of her husband’s proximity to the evidence in the lab.

“The police have hounded my husband all year, and he ended up having a nervous breakdown and killed himself,” Rebecca Brown said Thursday. “They kept hounding him on something he didn’t do. He’s a good, kind, sweet, gentle man.”

[...]

Brown was not assigned to any part of Claire’s investigation and was not associated with any of the evidence processed.

“We do not believe that there was any type of contamination in this case at all,” Guaderrama said.

[....]

She was strangled late in the evening of Aug. 24, 1984. Her body was found on a towel under the Old Highway 101 bridge. Her left breast had been cut away, and fingernail marks lashed her body, according to the autopsy report.

[....]

In many ways, Claire was an average teen who had a fondness for reading, a crush on actor Shaun Cassidy and KISS posters in her bedroom.

Her grandparents said she had spent part of her day at the beach and assumed she retired to her room that evening. They didn’t realize she was gone until 9 a.m. the next day when they reported her missing.

[...]

Her death was eerily similar to an unsolved killing at Torrey Pines State Beach that took place six years before. Barbara Nantais, a 15-year-old who had spent the night there with her boyfriend, was found strangled and mutilated Aug. 13, 1978. Her right breast had been nearly cut off.

Investigators have speculated the two deaths may be related, but Guaderrama said no evidence they collected during their investigation connects Brown or Tatro to Barbara’s killing.

[...]

Tatro had a lengthy criminal record, police say. In 1985 — a year after Claire’s killing — a 43-year-old Tatro was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and trying to rape a 16-year-old girl in La Mesa, police said. He coaxed her into his van and tried to subdue her with a stun gun, but she screamed and managed to get away.

She gave officers a license plate number. As police moved in on the van, he slit both his wrists. He pleaded guilty to felony false imprisonment and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Brown worked as a criminalist, first for New Mexico State Police from 1980 to 1982, then for the next 20 years at the San Diego Police Department. He worked in many parts of the lab over the years, from firearms to trace evidence.

He married his wife in 1993. After retiring from the San Diego Police Department, he worked again for New Mexico’s lab. He sold gadgets at Fry’s Electronics upon moving back to San Diego before retiring for good.

His widow said the first inkling of the police investigation turning toward her husband came Jan. 9 when police knocked on the door of their Chula Vista home with a search warrant.

[...]

Guaderrama said the DNA discovery had spurred an exhaustive investigation. Interviews around the country were conducted, law enforcement agencies from other states were enlisted to help and 30-year-old evidence was reanalyzed.

[...]

Brown was questioned multiple times throughout the year as were his family, friends and neighbors. He suffered from bouts of anxiety and depression and investigators were told about his fragile mental state, according to the criminal defense lawyer he’d hired, Gretchen von Helms.

He passed an independent polygraph test administered by a former police officer, von Helms said.

“They haven’t believed him and they’ve kept at it,” his wife said. “They just pushed my husband to an early grave.”

Brown was last seen Monday morning. He was still in bed when his wife went to work at Mater Dei Catholic High School, where she teaches. He got up, dressed and told his live-in mother-in-law that he had things to do.

His body was found on Tuesday, hanging from a tree at Cuyamaca State Park on Highway 79 near mile marker 7.25, Guaderrama said.

The widow said she was told that no suicide note has been found. Police have searched Brown’s truck and a cabin the family owns nearby.

[....]

http://m.utsandiego.com/news/2014/oct/23/sdpd-murder-criminalist-brown-hough-tatro/
 
Police criminalist who was suspect in 1984 murder of teenage girl found with one breast cut off and covered in scratch marks committed suicide after being interviewed over crime
  • Kevin Charles Brown, 62, found dead as police 'prepared to arrest him'
  • Had been questioned over 1984 murder of Claire Hough, 14
  • She was found mutilated at Torrey Pines State Beach, California
  • Brown worked for San Diego Police Dept from 1982-2002
  • Department said he had nothing to do with investigating Claire's murder
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Suspect suicide: Criminalist Kevin Charles Brown, left, was found dead as police were preparing to arrest him over the murder of 14-year-old Claire Hough in 1984
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Crime scene investigator: Brown was a criminalist with San Diego police for 20 years. He is pictured here at a crime scene in 1991. He retired in 2002
[...]
police employee who killed himself was a suspect in the 1984 murder of a 14-year-old girl, it emerged - and he had been interviewed by officers over the crime.

Kevin Charles Brown, 62, was a criminalist with the San Diego police department during the time that Claire Hough was found dead on a Californian beach in August, 30 years ago.

Investigators at the time could find no leads, but thanks to new DNA techniques, Brown was linked to the girl's brutal death. But as police were preparing to arrest Brown, he was found dead.

Brown had been interviewed in connection with the crime before his apparent suicide
[...]
Her left breast had been cut away and her body was covered in marks from fingernails.

Reports from the time suggest that Claire had slipped out of her grandparents' house nearby so she could smoke and listen to music cassettes.
[....]
body was discovered by a walker at 5am. Claire's grandparents raised the alarm when she had not returned by morning, and the body was identified as hers.
[...]
which employed Brown between 1982 and 2002, has said he never had anything to do with investigating Claire's case.

A second suspect who was identified is also dead, leaving the case with no leads. Ronald Tatro died in Tennesse in a boating accident
[....]
However, Brown's widow denied that he was anything to do with the murder, and suggested that his DNA could have become mixed with the evidence sampled because he worked in the same lab.

He had been questioned several times over the death
[....]
and preparations were being made to arrest him.

Rebecca Brown said: 'The police have hounded my husband all year, and he ended up having a nervous breakdown and killed himself.

'They kept hounding him on something he didn’t do. He’s a good, kind, sweet, gentle man.'

The police department has dismissed the notion that accidental contamination could be the reason for Brown's DNA being present.
Other suspect: Ronald Tatro was also linked to the murder. He died in 2011
 
The one perp had DNA on file as a convicted felon. How did they find out about the criminologist guy that committed suicide and how did they come across info of his involvement and his DNA...since he didn't have a record. Curious to find out more facts about these two. Glad its been solved.
I'm just happy that they were gonna charge him. I think those 2 cases were probably related in some way with one or the other of the guys
 
“The police have hounded my husband all year, and he ended up having a nervous breakdown and killed himself,” Rebecca Brown said Thursday. “They kept hounding him on something he didn’t do. He’s a good, kind, sweet, gentle man.”
Yes nothing says "good, kind, sweet and gentle" quite like this little gem:

Tatro had a lengthy criminal record, police say. In 1985 — a year after Claire’s killing — a 43-year-old Tatro was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and trying to rape a 16-year-old girl in La Mesa, police said. He coaxed her into his van and tried to subdue her with a stun gun, but she screamed and managed to get away.
:banghead:
 
Something seems really fishy to me about this case.

Firstly the similarities between the two cases seem far too strong for there to be no link.

Secondly there's been no link established between the two suspects as far as I have been able to find (and seriously, I would be very surprised if two men who did something as "intimate" as commit a sex murder together would have no other links between them other than that one act).

Third, the Tatro suspect was a very good suspect, with a solid history of similar crimes. Brown on the other hand seems to have been pretty much a model citizen.

Individually, these things might not be in and of themselves enough to raise questions, but all of them put together make me think the department may just have screwed the pooch with this investigation. I know they dismiss the possibility that accidental contamination in the lab could account for Brown's DNA being present, but how are they so sure? Lab procedures back in the 80's, when DNA science was still pretty much in its infancy may not have been rigourous enough to prevent cross contamination. It (cross contamination) has definitely happened before, as in the case of little Jaidyn Leskie, whose bib and tracksuit pants bore traces of DNA from a female rape victim whose clothing was processed in the same lab as Jaidyn's. And failures in storage and scientific procedure are known to occur, how often they occur though is unknown.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/10/1070732280097.html?from=storyrhs
 
^^^
But they said this Brown guy never handled any of the evidence from the murder. Not to mention, unless this dna came from a hair found on the body, how could it have come from brown? I doubt he's in the lab spraying his own blood everywhere or jerkin off.
 
But they said this Brown guy never handled any of the evidence from the murder. Not to mention, unless this dna came from a hair found on the body, how could it have come from brown? I doubt he's in the lab spraying his own blood everywhere or jerkin off.

Well if the dna evidence came from semen then that's definitely going to be hard to explain away, but if it's from dried saliva, that could come from something as innocuous as him sneezing on a surface, and that surface then being used to process evidence from the Claire Hough case.
 
@WannaBeMaybe

"Following Rebecca Brown's lawsuit, forensic experts reported that when Kevin Brown worked in the San Diego Crime Lab, the place was horribly polluted and poorly run.
Instead of purchasing bodily fluid specimens as control samples, male lab personnel, including Kevin Brown, submitted samples of their own blood and semen.
This, along with other lax and sloppy lab procedures created the possibility of evidence contamination and co-mingling that could explain a false Kevin Brown DNA identification.
In any case, had the case gone to trial, due to the conditions of the San Diego Crime Laboratory, the DNA evidence would have been inadmissible. Without the DNA [there was no case.] "

On February 23, 2020, in a San Diego courtroom, the jury hearing the Rebecca Brown civil case against the police department and other defendants, awarded her $6 million.
In addition, Detective Michael Lambert was ordered to pay the plaintiff $50,000 in punitive damages for his role in the investigation.
Rebecca and her attorney indicated, however, that if Michael Lambert apologized, they would reduce the amount he owed them.
The detective refused to apologize so the punitive damages remained at $50,000."

 

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