DNA links suspect to 1981 cold case murder of disabled Sacramento teen, police say
Police believe the 1981 murder of a developmentally disabled teenager in Sacramento has been solved via DNA evidence. The sole suspect was, himself, murdered a year later, the Sacramento Police Department said this week.
Authorities say DNA technology provided new leads in the 39-year-old cold case homicide death of 17-year-old Mary London, described by family at the time as a developmentally disabled 10th-grader at Sacramento High School.
On the morning of Jan. 15, 1981, a witness located London’s body dumped along a then-rural stretch of San Juan Road in North Sacramento, the Sacramento Police Department said Thursday in a news release. Detectives at the time determined the victim had been stabbed multiple times, her body then dumped.
Investigators with the Police Department and Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office used “investigative genetic genealogy and traditional DNA testing” to link a man named Vernon Parker to the “brutal murder of Mary London.”
Parker, described in the news release as the homicide’s “sole suspect,” was himself murdered in 1982, the Police Department said.
“Though this case won’t end with the suspect facing the justice system, the decades of work by Sacramento Police Department investigators, forensic personnel, and the office of the Sacramento County District Attorney has resulted in what we hope will be closure for London’s family,” Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn said in a statement.
Advancements and improvements in DNA technology in recent years have led to numerous law enforcement breakthroughs in identifying suspects in cold case crimes.
The most high-profile among them was the arrest of the suspected East Area Rapist/Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo, who was linked by DNA evidence to a series of rapes, murders and burglaries across California from the 1970s to 1980s. DeAngelo, a former police officer, was arrested April 2018 at his Citrus Heights home, where he had lived undetected for decades. He is awaiting trial.
This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 10:28 AM.
