Photo Source. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? Investigators said he used to live in Southern California in the 1970s and was known as James Albert Layton Jr at the time, although he later moved to Florida and changed his name. Parabon has worked on the majority of the cold cases cracked through genetic genealogy, including O'Keefe's case. This defendant seems quite emotionally immature and psychologically unstable, McMillan wrote in his report. He left California after the alleged killing and went to Florida where he changed his name, officials said. In August 1969, he was convicted of fraud in Denver and sentenced to three to 10 year at Colorados Territorial Correctional Facility. More than 45. He later changed his name, officials said. The 11-year-old was last seen on this street talking to a stranger in a van. The child disappeared while walking home from summer. James Alan Neal fue arrestado el 19 de febrero de 2019, en relacin con su muerte, segn anunciaron los fiscales en una conferencia de prensa. On the day Linda Ann O'Keefe died, it was a cooler-than-normal July morning in Newport . Last year, 45 years after O'Keefe's body was found, police released these sketches of her suspected killer. Girl Was Stabbed 59 Times After Parting Ways with Boyfriend in 1982 and Suspect Was Just Arrested, to recount the story of Lindas life, mysterious disappearance and death. The DNA researcher Moore has been on the forefront of linking cold cases to suspects through genetic material voluntarily offered by Americans doing ancestry research. As a result of surveillance and other traditional detective techniques, they were able to get additional DNA which resulted in the corroboration of the DNA from the victims body, to the DNA sample that the suspect left during a particular location during surveillance activities, the Orange County district attorney said after Neals arrest in February 2019. McMillan remained skeptical. James Neal had been living in California at the time of the girl's murder but had since moved to Colorado. WATCH LIVE: Retrial for Florida man Eric Robinson accused of brutal love triangle murder, Law&Crime Looks Ahead to 10 Remarkable Criminal Trials Scheduled for the First Half of 2023, 9 Shocking Times Defendants Testified at Trial, 10 Most Memorable Law&Crime Network Trials, Man busted after $3M worth of drugs mysteriously showed up to restaurant, Police officer who did not show up for work found shot to death in his house along with his newlywed wife, Justice for Katelyn. Shortly after Lindas murder, investigators recovered DNA evidence from her remains, Spitzer said. At the time, Linda attended summer school at Lincoln Intermediate School in Corona Del Mar, California. Linda O'Keefe fue asesinada en 1973 mientras caminaba a casa desde la escuela. SANTA ANA, CA Officials in California say James Alan Neal, who was arrested last year in Monument for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Linda O'Keefe, has died. . 72-year-old arrested in connection with 1973 murder of 11-year-old girl, Linda O'Keefe, who lived in the Corona del Mar neighborhood and was last seen alive July 6, 1973, as she walked home from summer school. (Courtesy of Newport Beach Police Department) OKeefe, 11, was abducted on July 6, 1973, as she walked home from summer school, the Newport Beach, California, Police Department said. It was our intention to see James Alan Neal stand trial and answer for the murder of Linda Ann OKeefe. James Alan Neal, the 73-year-old charged in the 1973 cold case murder of 11-year-old Linda O'Keefe, died on Wednesday at about 5:15 a.m. That's according to Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesperson Jaimee Blashaw in an NBC Los Angeles report. Spitzer lauded noted DNA investigator CeCe Moore for helping police develop a "pointer" toward Neal. James Alan Neal, 72, was picked up in Colorado on Tuesday and charged with the murder of 11-year-old Linda O'Keefe in 1973. People in the city of Newport Beach have been following this case for literally 45 years, Spitzer said. He worked odd jobs as a cook, factory worker, a floral delivery person, etc., but could never consistently hold down a job. His earliest crimes were breaking into homes when he was around 12-years-old. "He lived here in the 1970s," Spitzer said. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your device and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. The girl, whose body was found the next day, was strangled. The sister of a little girl who was strangled to death in 1973 didn't expect to see a conclusion to the mysterious cold case, she told ABC News hours after a man's arrest was announced on Wednesday. He also teamed up with reporter Joe Nelson in 2019 on Bad Apples, an award winning investigation that exposed years of sex abuse cover up in the Redlands Unified School District. Her strangled body was found the next day. . These were in relation to him committing lewd acts to a child in Riverside County, California, between July 1995 and July 2000 and then to another child between March 2002 and March 2004. A man has been arrested through DNA and genetic genealogy in the decades-old cold case killing of 11-year-old Linda Ann OKeefe, who was strangled to death in Southern California in 1973, authorities said. On one hand, we were grateful that we could have that conversation and provide some closure.". It is not clear if Neal, 72, will waive extradition, Spitzer said. After the burglary sentencing, James moved to Denver, Colorado, where he was accused of stealing from the gas station he worked at. Shes really good at sewing, and we dont have a lot of money for fancy store outfits anyhow. #LindasStory pic.twitter.com/9sucqJsnGg, Newport Beach Police (@NewportBeachPD) July 6, 2018. Based on a witness statement, it was believed a man in a van kidnapped Linda. He said he was glad he had all that stuff behind him but never mentioned what he had done, Malecki recalled. James Alan Neal was arrested February 19, 2019, in connection to her death, prosecutors announced at a press conference.. He feels he has always been picked on and never given a chance to better himself or be equal to others, Neal wrote in the report. The Twitter campaign did not lead to the suspect's identification, but it did create an emphasis on the case and opened doors for the case to be pursued with renewed efforts, officials said. Linda Ann O'Keefe's killing in 1973 in Newport Beach, California went unsolved for more than four decades. [Mugshot via Newport Beach Police Department], Have a tip we should know? "He seemed like a good guy," Neal's landlord, Michael Thulson,. It was our intention to see James Alan Neal stand trial and answer for the murder of Linda Ann OKeefe, Newport Beach Police Chief Jon Lewis said. James spent time in juvenile prison and later dropped out of school in 1963. Newport Beach police launched a new PR campaign in 2018 using Tweets written in Lindas voice. Neal moved to Southern California from Chicago before the murder and relocated to Florida after the girl's slaying, authorities said. Police also urged the public to share details about O'Keefe's disappearance on social media with the hashtag #Lindastory. When O'Keefe didn't return home right away, there was little concern at first. Then her mother made that call that every parent dreads and told police her daughter was missing, he said. He was released from the penitentiary in July 1971. He's now the suspect in the 1973 murder of 11-year-old Linda Ann O'Keefe. According to police, O'Keefe normally rode her bike to summer school. Neal then moved back to California, where he lived until 2014 at six addresses in Riverside, Hemet and Winchester, public records show. She had been strangled and was still wearing a blue-and-white floral print dress that her mother had sewn for her. He pleaded not guilty to the murder and to allegations of lewd and lascivious acts on two girls under age 14 between 1995-2004. However, the case remained unsolved for about 46 years before the investigators found the killer. Records obtained by the Southern California News Group show that Neal was arrested more than a dozen times in California, Florida and Colorado from 1959 to 1974. McMillan went on to say that Neals father, who designed drugstores, and his mother, who was a bookkeeper, were described as extremely neurotic people who were both physically and psychologically cruel to their children. They are reported to be detached emotionally and narcissistic, he added. Linda O'Keefe. In July 2018, her story touched millions of people through #LindasStory (https://t.co/yxv1fLFIZp). On Tuesday, nearly 46 years after O'Keefe's life ended, authorities arrested a man they say is suspected of being her killer: a 72-year-old living in Colorado named James Neal. Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. It is unclear whether he has retained a lawyer who can speak on his behalf. Track Latest News and Karnataka Elections 2023 Coverage Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world. Neal was taken to a hospital on May 25 for an illness. Linda Ann O'Keefe was the middle child in a family of five. DNA recovered from O'Keefe shortly after her death was put into the Combined DNA Index System -- the law enforcement database known as CODIS -- but there was no hit, Spitzer said. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. Using details from the investigator's decades-old case files, police relayed O'Keefe's last hours, as well as her family's frantic search for her, as if they were unfolding in real time, as The Washington Post's Meagan Flynn reported: "At 6:42 p.m., six hours since her mother had last heard from her, O'Keefe's parents reported her missing to the Newport Beach Police Department, convinced by then O'Keefe was not simply running off with friends to retaliate for not getting a ride. David K. Li is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital. Nothing he said made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. We will make sure that the defendant is fairly and justly held accountable in a court of law.". Reportedly, Colorado resident James Alan Neal was arrested in 2019 after a DNA report linked him to Linda O'Keefe's 1973 cold murder case. Her killer, James Alan Neel, was caught 45 years later, in February 2019, after. The key moment arrived with the February 19, 2019 arrest of Neal in Colorado Springs, Colorado. "That sample remained in the system for a long period of time," Spitzer said. Neal said that despite his recidivism, he was confident he could become successful. The next day, a man visiting that area found O'Keefe's strangled body, police said. My mom made it. He is awaiting extradition from Colorado Springs to Orange County. ORANGE COUNTY, Colo. (KKTV) - The suspect in a decades-old cold case died Wednesday while awaiting trial. Then, after he was paroled again in August 1963, he was arrested a year later for burglary and sentenced to nine months in the Orange County jail. "It is bittersweet to hear that, yes, this case has been resolved. But Spitzer admitted that it is a murky legal decision because capital punishment was not an option when the 11-year-old was killed. James Alan Neal, 72, of Monument, Colorado, who was arrested for allegedly murdering Linda O'Keefe in Newport Beach, California, in 1973. Today, we have a new message to share, and we are giving Linda a voice once more. His next court appearance is set for June 14. But that day, she was dropped off. James Alan Neal, who was 73, was taken to an area hospital on May 25 due to an undisclosed illness, said Jaimee Blashaw of the Orange County Sheriff's Department. / CBS Colorado. He has also accompanied police on undercover drug buys and also provided an award winning, eyewitness account of the execution of a North Carolina death row inmate. Detectives from Newport Beach arrested Neal at 6:29 a.m. in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Newport Beach Police Chief Jon Lewis said at the press conference. O'Keefe disappeared while she was walking home from summer school. James Neal, 72, who lived in Southern California and worked in construction in the 1970s, was arrested this week in Colorado, where he had been living, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said at a Wednesday news conference. The 72-year-old Neal was extradited to California from Colorado after he was charged with murder in the death of 11-year-old Linda O'Keefe in the seaside community of Newport Beach. "My office will never forget about cold cases," Spitzer said in a statement. Since April 2018, genetic genealogy has helped identify more than three dozen suspects, said CeCe Moore, chief genetic genealogist with Parabon NanoLabs. She had been strangled. Detectives from the Newport Beach Police Department kept investigating. The investigation into the homicide remained cold for 45 years until Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs used DNA to identify Neal as a suspect in the killing, leading to his arrest last month in Colorado. The sketches depict what the suspect may have looked like at 25 years old as well as an age-progressed version. ", Borgeson said, if she gets a chance to speak to Neal, she would "let him know that I've been praying for him.". She makes a lot of my clothes, and my sisters clothes. Police were tight-lipped about exactly how they solved the case but said they received a lead in January that prompted them to begin investigating Neal, who had been living in Orange County at the time of O'Keefe's killing but had since moved to Colorado. Only one person, a woman who did not know anything about a missing girl, was close enough to hear her, and by then it was too late. ', " As 'Linda' noted in the tweets in July, her case would generate numerous theories and a sketch of a 'person of interest' but ultimately grow cold.". Her image hung among the faces of other unsolved cases, reminding each. He was apprehended in February after DNA analysis identified him as a suspect in OKeefes slaying. While waiting to use the school phone, O'Keefe went outside. Even after detectives got the lead through genealogical DNA, investigators needed to a secure a sample from Neal, Spitzer said. The genealogical hit came in January, officials said. An eight-page report prepared by McMillan offers for the first time clues about what may have driven his criminal behavior. 11-year-old Linda O'Keefe was kidnapped on her way back from home in July 1973. Her body was found the next day -- but decades went by without an arrest. Linda O'Keefe, 11, vanished in July 1973 when she was heading home from school in Newport Beach. OKeefe, 11, was abducted on July 6, 1973, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Authorities suspect that Neal, while on parole in the Colorado case, snatched OKeefe, who lived in Corona del Mar, from the street on July 6, 1973, as she walked home from summer school. Man who served 15 years for murder his brother confessed to awarded $7,500,000, Woman 'sold 20 boxes of fetuses, hearts, genitalia and brains on Facebook', One killed after plane crashes into Los Angeles neighborhood. 1 dead, 1 rescued by firefighters after speeding car crashed into tree in Colorado Springs, Voice of the consumer: Looking for a job? Neals education was terminated early and his work history was spotty, McMillan reported. Paul Bersebach/The Orange County Register via AP. Please see the press release for more information. Colorado man charged in 1973 Orange County cold case dies awaiting trial. James Alan Neal, 73, was an inmate at the maximum-security Theo Lacy jail in Orange for the 1973 sexual assault and strangling death of Linda O'Keefe, 11. Then, in 1974, he was sent back to prison in Colorado for a parole violation and released three years later. "Technology has caught up with the law," Spitzer said Wednesday. A day later, her body was found in a ditch, and she had been sexually assaulted. Neal was living in Monument at the time of his arrest and was extradited to Orange County, California, where he has remained since. Borgeson said she also prayed for Neal's family as his arrest was announced. That night, a woman who lives in the bluffs above Back Bay heard a voice scream, "Stop, youre hurting me," police said. Spitzer refused to elaborate on how they were able to track down Neal and identify him as a suspect after 45 years, but he said police had received a "pointer notification through genealogical DNA" - perhaps suggesting that authorities had come upon DNA from someone related to Neal that would have implicated him as a possible match. The police department last year also "live-tweeted" O'Keefe's story from her perspective, narrating the final day of her life in real-time, exactly 45 years later. Police hoped that retelling the girl's story through the modern-day medium would help people from a different generation form an emotional attachment to the case. 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Records reveal Neal was arrested on Sept. 9, 1973, in Marion County, Florida, on a fraud charge for writing a bad check and unauthorized use of a vehicle. James Alan Neal, 72, was picked up in Colorado on Tuesday and charged with the murder of 11-year-old Linda O'Keefe in 1973. Linda never made it home that afternoon., For 45 years, the Newport Beach Police Department continued to search for Lindas killer," Lewis said. The child disappeared while walking home from summer school, and her body was found strangled in a ditch the next day. Blashaw did not explain what this sickness was but elaborated that the inmate did not have COVID-19 symptoms. Through the tireless efforts of generations of our investigators, we hope we have been able to bring a measure of closure to Lindas family, friends, and loved ones.. He is being held in Colorado, and if he waives extradition, could be moved to California before the end of the week, officials said. . Photo Source. "We want as many sets of eyes on that sketch as possible, so somebody can recognize the face of a killer so we can get justice.". The next day she was found strangled, her. All rights reserved. At the time of the murder, Neal was using the name James Allen George Layton, prosecutors said. Police also want to know if Neal could be linked to other crimes. He was released on parole in July 1971, and about two years later, the authorities believed he killed Linda. James Alan Neal, 73, was transferred to a local hospital May 25 for treatment of an illness and died there at about 5:15 a.m. Wednesday, according to Orange County sheriff's officials. Neal has been charged with one count of murder with the special circumstances of kidnapping and committing lewd and lascivious acts upon a child younger than 14, Spitzer said. But O'Keefe never came home. In addition to the count of murder while committing lewd acts on a child, Neal was also accused of lewd acts against two other girls under the age of 14 in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Lindas story deeply touched the hearts of our community. She loved animals, playing the piano, and painting. Investigators identified Neal as a suspect using genealogical DNA. "Our hearts go out to the victim and the victim's family in this case, having to endure decades without answers. It wasnt long before Neal was in trouble again. But again, it's a reminder of what happened. As part of an effort to renew interest in the case, the Newport Beach Police Department used their Twitter account to recount the story of Lindas life, mysterious disappearance and death. When you visit this site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. The authorities confirmed that the 73-year-old showed no symptoms of COVID-19 and that his death was not considered suspicious. Have a tip or story idea? Neals extensive criminal history and the circumstances of the 1973 sexual assault and murder of 11-year-old Linda OKeefe lead law enforcement to seek potential additional victims and witnesses. Linda O'Keefe. James lived in the area around the time and worked in construction.
Eric Bandholz Net Worth,
Chili's Southwest Chicken Caesar Salad Recipe,
Articles J