Citrus Heights mystery: He died in hanging, her death was a homicide. What’s the link?
Police say they have neither confirmed nor ruled out murder-suicide after a man and woman in a dating relationship were each found dead under grisly circumstances, the man hanging from a tree near Interstate 80 and the woman with traumatic injuries inside her Citrus Heights apartment.
California Highway Patrol officials first reported that a man had been found dead Saturday night, hanged from a tree with a rope around his neck about 30 feet away from eastbound I-80 west of Riverside Avenue, near the border between Citrus Heights and Roseville. The death was termed “suspicious” in an initial news release by CHP’s North Sacramento office.
Four days later, CHP officers and police discovered the man’s girlfriend dead inside her Citrus Heights residence on Auburn Oaks Court, less than a mile away from the scene of the hanging. The woman had “significant” upper-body trauma, according to a news release by the Citrus Heights Police Department, and had likely been dead “for a number of days” by the time the body was located.
The Police Department said the two deaths appeared to be an “isolated incident and there is no reason to believe there is any threat to the general public.”
“At this point, based on what we saw inside that apartment, we are treating this like a homicide, and we’re investigating as such until we can prove otherwise,” Citrus Heights Police spokesman Lt. Wesley Herman said Friday.
Herman said investigators confirmed that the woman had been dead “quite some time.”
“It’s not confirmed if this is a murder-suicide,” Herman added. “That’s certainly a possibility and we’re not ruling that out, but we have not confirmed that.”
The man hanging by rope from the tree has been identified by the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office as 59-year-old Robert Rankin.
A spokesman with CHP’s Valley Division had told The Bee early Wednesday that the incident involving the rope and tree was being looked at as a possible suicide, with nothing to suggest Rankin’s death was homicide. Later that afternoon, around 1:45 p.m., CHP officers discovered a dead woman during a welfare check at an apartment or condo unit in the 7400 block of Auburn Oaks Court, according to Citrus Heights PD.
The welfare check was performed the address was linked to the hanged man, the Police Department said Thursday in a news release.
In an update a few hours later, the department affirmed that detectives had connected the two deaths, as detectives “confirmed the deceased female located in her residence (Wednesday) was in a dating relationship with the male decedent located by the California Highway Patrol on Saturday, January 11th during their suspicious death investigation,” according to a Citrus Heights PD news release.
Police also said the female “appeared to have been deceased in the residence for a number of days and was last seen around January 8th,” three days before Rankin’s body was found.
The woman’s specific cause of death remains under investigation by the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office, with Herman saying Friday the examiner’s results could take about another week. The woman’s identity has not been released by police or the Coroner’s Office.
Auburn Oaks Court consists of a cluster of apartments, townhomes and condos that back up against eastbound I-80, just before the off-ramp to Riverside Avenue and Auburn Boulevard.
Small fences and a sound wall separate those residences from the trees that run along the freeway. The distance between the apartment and the tree are a few hundred yards.
CHP North Sacramento spokesman Officer Greg Zumstein said no associated vehicle was found parked near where Rankin’s body was found hanging.
Sacramento Superior Court records show a criminal history for Rankin with felony cases in the county between 2000 and 2004. In 2002, Rankin was charged with two felony counts of making criminal threats to cause death or great bodily harm, but the charges were reduced to misdemeanors.
The incident remains under investigation, and Herman urges anyone with information to contact the Citrus Heights PD tip line at 916-727-5524.
“We’re talking to friends, neighbors, relatives – anyone who might have information about these two and their relationship, maybe past history of the two,” Herman said. “So we are asking the public, if they saw something or heard something, if they have any history, even if it seems insignificant, please contact the Police Department. Because often times those small details can make a case, and help us solve it.”
