Whisper
#byefelicia
Claire Hough was murdered on Torrey Pines State Beach in 1984. Her case was just solved through DNA
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...nd-girl-solved-dna-evidence-article-1.1985930[....]
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
San Diego police solve 1984 killing of teen at Torrey Pines State Beach
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-1984-killing-solved-20141023-story.htmlThe 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
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Both suspects in the strangulation and mutilation of 14-year-old Claire Hough are dead,
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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
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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
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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
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In both the 1978 and 1984 killings, the victim was strangled, sand was pushed into her mouth, and one of her breasts was mutilated,
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In three decades, hundreds of police and other investigators combed the beach, pored through files and conducted interviews for possible leads
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“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.
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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.”
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