Sacramento Sheriff, DA announce arrest in 40-year-old cold case killling of Rosemont woman

Forty years to the day of her gruesome death, Sacramento law enforcement officials announced Friday an arrest in the stabbing death of Robin Gisela Brooks, who was 20 years old when she was sexually assaulted and killed in her Rosemont apartment on April 24, 1980.

Phillip Lee Wilson, 71, was arrested at his home on Thursday, Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, Sgt. Tess Deterding said at Friday’s news conference alongside Sheriff Scott Jones and Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.

Wilson is being held without bail at the Sacramento County Main Jail on one charge of murder.

It was unclear how Wilson knew Brooks. Deterding said further details about the case would not be disclosed at this time.

Brooks had moved to the Sacramento area from New York six months before her death and worked as a clerk at a doughnut shop on Keifer Boulevard and Tallyho Drive, according to The Sacramento Bee’s article at the time.

At the time of the slaying, Wilson lived in a rented home on remote Happy Lane, which borders Mather Field and is less than two miles from where Brooks lived.

Brooks’ body was discovered by a co-worker who checked on her after she didn’t show up for work.

Another person who worked at the doughnut shop at the time of the killing told The Bee that Brooks had been “jovial” when she left work at midnight April 24, and spoke about having to make her bed at bedtime. She walked home alone from the doughnut shop. The bed was still unmade when her body was found, The Bee reported.

Her body was found face down on her waterbed, which had also been pierced in the stabbing. Deterding said that Brooks was found with multiple stab wounds and was sexually assaulted in the crime.

In 1980, there were no immediate suspects at the time of her death, and the case went cold.

DNA evidence came from blood samples

“That first ray of hope came in 2004 when forensic DNA evidence was developed 25 years after the crime had been committed,” said Schubert. “That ray of hope came when our crime lab was able to develop a DNA profile from the person who left DNA behind from the rape murder of Robin Brooks.”

The killer apparently cut himself during the assault and his DNA profile was uploaded to the Combined DNA Index System database.

Investigators continued to pursue the case and in 2016 asked for the public’s help again in solving it. Some investigators, such as Sergeant Micki Links, continued to investigate well after retirement.

In the last three years, law enforcement was able to use what Schubert called the “greatest tool ever given to law enforcement:” investigative genetic genealogy.

The technique is similar to that used in another cold case that led to the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, who is awaiting trial in the Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist cases that occurred over a decade across the state.

“I have been involved in this investigation for 16 years,” Links said. “... I’ve dreamed of this day to actually stand up here and say we’ve arrested the man responsible for this crime.”

At the time of his arrest, Wilson was living in the Hagginwood section of North Sacramento, according to public records.

Wilson faced assault-and-battery charges in Sacramento County in 1985, but court records don’t indicate what happened to the case.

He also had run-ins with law enforcement in Texas, with a one-year sentence for possession of marijuana in El Paso County in 1994. He was released in January 1995 and had a subsequent probation violation in 1999.

“We never forget about the victims,” said Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones. “In fact in many respects, that’s all we think about are victims. Sometimes these cases take a little bit longer to solve than others, but none of them are forgotten, none of them are put on the shelf forever.”

In a video at the press conference, Brooks’ sister Maria said today is a “bittersweet anniversary.”

“This arrest hopefully will give hope to families, other victims of unsolved crimes,” she said. “...I know Robin is smiling and saying job well done.”

This story was originally published April 24, 2020 at 1:22 PM.