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.
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Arrested were 65-year-old Larry Don Patterson of Oakhurst, Oklahoma, and 65-year-old William Lloyd Harbour of Olivehurst, California.
Patterson and his cousin, William Lloyd Harbour, face murder charges in the deaths of 12-year-old Valerie Janice Lane and 13-year-old Doris Karen Derryberry.
The girls’ mothers first reported them missing as runaways on November 12, 1973, after they failed to return home overnight from a shopping trip to a mall in nearby Linda. The girls were seen together around town several times that afternoon, and were last sighted between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Olivehurst Avenue near Seventh Avenue, sheriff’s officials said.
A few hours later, about 1:30 p.m., the girls were found dead alongside a dirt road near Camp Far West Lake outside of Wheatland. They had both been killed by shotgun blasts at close range, authorities said. Evidence indicated that Derryberry also has been sexually assaulted.
“Back in 1973, this simply didn’t happen”, he said.
The homicide case remained an active investigation until 1976, when the case went cold following more than 60 interviews but no successful leads, authorities said.
(Yuba County Sheriff’s Department via AP). Evidence collected during the original investigation was reviewed and submitted to the California Department of Justice Forensic Labs for analysis. The two suspects were connected to the crime by DNA.
Durfor added that Harbour had felony drug convictions.
They considered Patterson after he was charged in 1976 with raping two adult women in nearby Chico, Vacek said, but found no link until the DNA match decades later. One of the men is a convicted sex offender. Patterson is being held in Oklahoma in that case.
District Attorney Patrick McGrath says both will face murder charges. “And it’s really, really hard”, Margrette Hasting, the mother of Valerie Janice Lane, said after the arraignment. The families had previously been notified that the case had been reopened, Durfor said. Patterson, who also was 22, lived on Charlotte Court in Olivehurst in 1973.
The twin slayings four decades ago shocked the small community and the nation, he said. Patterson was being held in the local jail on multiple charges involving the deaths, said Tommy Roberts, the supervisory deputy USA marshal in Tulsa.
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Durfor said Harbour likely would be arraigned Wednesday in Yuba Superior Court.
