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No death penalty in 1973 California killings

Officials with the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department found the girls’ bodies alongside a dirt road near Camp Far West Lake outside of Wheatland a few hours later.

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Yuba County District Attorney Patrick McGrath, discusses the arrests made related to the 1973 killings of two California girls, at a news conference, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, in Marysville, Calif. Larry Don Patterson, 65, of Oklahoma, and William Lloyd Harbour, 65, of Olivehurst, Calif., were taken into custody, Tuesday, as suspects in the slayings of Valerie Janice Lane, 12, and Doris Karen Derryberry, 13, in Yuba County.

Yuba County prosecutor John Vacek says William Lloyd Harbour pleaded not guilty to murder at his arraignment in California on Wednesday.

“Our sympathies are with the families and we’re just glad to start the healing process for them even if it’s 43 years later”, said Leslie Carbah with the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department. Authorities tell PEOPLE they got some of that this week with the “long overdue” arrest of two suspects in the double homicide.

The case remained unsolved until March 2014, when investigators reviewing the case with improved forensic testing linked DNA evidence to Harbour and Patterson.

The testing, which was completed in December 2014, revealed a match between the DNA at the scene and the DNA of William Lloyd Harbour and Larry Don Patterson.

The 84-year-old Solano County rancher said he may have been one of the last people to see 12-year-old Valerie Janice Lane and 13-year-old Doris Derryberry on November 11, 1973. They ask for privacy during this time.

Investigators hope the break in the case provides closure.

Investigators conducted more than 60 interviews but failed to generate any successful leads.

After the suspects’ match, Yuba authorities said they worked on a “renewed and expanded investigation” before presenting their evidence to the district attorney for warrants, according to the news release. Patterson also had a 2006 arrest for failing to register as a sex offender, Durfor said.

He regretted that he didn’t write down the license plate number of the vehicle and said he never contacted the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office, which investigated the murders.

Olivehurst in 1973 was a very small community, Durfor said. The families had previously been notified that the case had been reopened, Durfor said. Harbour was apprehended in nearby Linda, California and Patterson in Oklahoma.

Harbour, who was 22 at the time of the slayings, lives on Sixth Avenue in Olivehurst. Public Defender Brian Davis was appointed Wednesday to represent Harbour and declined comment.

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As in most cold cases, like in this case detailed by the Inquisitr, which are solved by DNA, the length of time between the murders and the identification of the alleged killers led to unique problems. “I think they were just kind of overwhelmed with the information they were being provided, so that was just a piece of it”, he said.

Men Nabbed In 1973 Killings of 2 Girls After Investigator With'Free Time Gets Their DNA Tested