DNA leads to arrest of homeless man in slaying of 20-year-old Rancho Cordova woman

Sacramento sheriff’s officials arrested a 37-year-old homeless man Friday afternoon in the brutal assault and slaying of a 20-year-old Rancho Cordova woman whose body was found Feb. 1 near the American River.

Mikilo Morgan Rawls, 37, was being booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail late Friday on charges of murder, rape by means of force, violence or fear and sodomy, online jail records say.

Rawls is scheduled to make his first court appearance Tuesday in the slaying of Emma Roark, who was last seen alive on Jan. 27 near Coloma Road and McGregor Drive in Rancho Cordova.

Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Jim Barnes and Rancho Cordova Police Chief Brandon Luke told reporters at a news conference Friday night that DNA evidence led investigators to identify Rawls as the suspect in Roark’s death.

“This type of violent crime tears at the fabric of community safety,” Barnes said in announcing the arrest. “I am proud of the Sheriff’s Office personnel, which includes the Rancho Cordova Police Department, who stood tall to protect our community and brought resolution to this brutal crime. I also want to thank the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Crime Lab for their collaboration on this investigation.”

Rawls has a criminal record in Sacramento County stretching back to at least 2005, and his DNA is in law enforcement databases as a result.

Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert would not comment on whether DNA led to the arrest, but said she was “incredibly proud of the work that our crime lab conducted in this case.”

“The evidence analyzed by our crime lab was instrumental in this case,” Schubert added.

Authorities also declined to discuss whether Rawls and Roark knew each other before the encounter that led to her death.

Rawls’ first court case in Sacramento was a 2005 arrest for a misdemeanor weapons charges that was later dismissed, records show.

Rawls pleaded no contest in 2018 to burglary and sentenced to a year in custody and five years of probation. Online court records show he violated his probation twice, once in October 2020 and again in June 2021. He also pleaded no contest in June 2021 to a misdemeanor count of resisting an officer and was given a 105-day sentence, records show.

Roark, who was on the autism spectrum, was last seen alive Jan. 27 near Coloma Road and McGregor Drive in Rancho Cordova. Her body was found in a secluded area near the El Manto access point along the river parkway after a four-day search that included helicopters, drones, dogs and law enforcement officials,.

Sources say Rawls was known to be living in a tent on the parkway since at least 2016.

The Rawls family moved to Rancho Cordova in 1981 from Merced, according to Sacramento Bee archives.

Mikilo Rawls is one of two children and attended Cordova Villa Elementary School. In a 1992 “Family Album” in The Bee, Mikilo Rawls said he enjoyed swimming and T-ball, and was not certain what he wanted to be when he grew up.

His father was a manager at the Sacramento Jobs Corps Center, and his mother was an assistant controller at the Tierra del Oro Girl Scout Council.

Neither parent could be reached late Friday. A phone listing for his father had been disconnected, and his mother did not respond to a message left on her cellphone.

This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 5:23 PM.