Authorities have finally made arrests in the death of two girls in California more than 40 years later.
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Some of the family members are now elderly and “have waited for something for 43 years for an answer as to what happened to their kids”, Yuba County District Attorney Patrick McGrath said.
A law enforcement task force arrested Patterson on Tuesday in the rural town of Oakhurst, Oklahoma. This 2011 booking photo provided by the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department shows William Lloyd Harbour, who was arrested in Yuba County, Calif., Tuesday Sept. 13, 2016, on charges related to the 1973 slayings of.
Harbour and Patterson, both 65, were 22 when they allegedly killed Valerie Janice Lane, 12, and Doris Karen Derryberry, 13, in Olivehurst, California – blasting them apart with shotguns at close range, Yuba County Sheriff Steven Durfor tells PEOPLE.
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The girls’ mothers first reported them missing on November 12, 1973, after they failed to return home from a trip to a mall. Both suspects were living in Olivehurst at that time, investigators said. Semen that was found on one of the victims matched the DNA of both suspects.
Durfor says this case has long lingered in the community’s memory and that many investigators have tried to crack it.
But they won’t face the possibility of execution, District Attorney Patrick McGrath told The Associated Press.
Authorities say the girls were driven to a wooded area near Marysville, California, north of Sacramento, and shot at close range.
In March 2014, an investigator doing a routine look through cold cases made a decision to send semen samples found on Derryberry’s body and preserved for 43 years to the state Department of Justice forensics lab for analysis. “This was them having the forewarning of knowing such advancements weren’t even invented back in 1973 and they didn’t know what was on the horizon”. Patterson was behind bars for a 1976 arrest on charges of raping two adult women in Chico.
Authorities say it was an investigator “with a bit of free time” who chose to send DNA samples from a long-dormant California cold case to a lab for new testing.
“I think they were just kind of overwhelmed with the information they were being provided, so that was just a piece of it”, said Deputy District Attorney John Vacek.
Both men have a history of felony convictions that resulted in prison sentences, and as a result their DNA is in a national database, Durfor said.
Olivehurst in 1973 was a very small community, Durfor said. Patterson is being held in an Oklahoma jail as he awaits an extradition hearing.
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Harbour is slated to next appear in court on October 19.
