DNA evidence leads to arrest of murder suspect in 1979 El Dorado County cold case
Investigators this week arrested a man in Washington state on suspicion of murder in the death of a woman more than 43 years ago in El Dorado County — after a DNA test on a decades-old rape kit linked him to the crime, prosecutors said.
Harold Warren Carpenter, 63, remained in custody Wednesday afternoon at the Spokane County Jail. Carpenter is accused of beating and strangling 35-year-old Patricia Carnahan, according to the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office.
A nationwide effort to eliminate the backlog of untested sexual assault kits led to an unrelated 1994 rape investigation in Spokane. Evidence collected in that investigation led to the unsolved California cold case.
Prosecutors said this is one of the oldest cold-case killings in the country to be solved through a sexual assault DNA kit that was uploaded to the federal database, and it’s the 13th case solved as a result of “dogged detective work” after the creation of a cold-case task force in El Dorado County.
“Sadly, Ms. Carnahan was buried in a potter’s field under a headstone of an ‘unidentified female,’” El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson said in a news release. “Because of the tireless dedication of our investigators, she was identified and returned to her family. Now due to multi-state collaboration by numerous agencies her killer will finally be held accountable.”
Body found South Lake Tahoe campground
Prosecutors said Carnahan was left for dead on Sept. 28, 1979, at a South Lake Tahoe campground. Her body was recovered, but her identity remained unknown for 36 years. She was initially buried in a nondescript grave marked “Unidentified Female Tahoma 9-79.”
Carnahan was a resident of Arlington County, Virginia at the time of her death. It’s unclear why she was in Northern California in September 1979.
Investigators at the time gathered evidence at the campground crime scene, along with a sexual assault kit that provided a DNA sample, according to the district attorney. No suspects were arrested at the time.
In 2015, investigators with the El Dorado County Cold Case Homicide Unit revived the case. A forensic anthropologist from California State University, Chico exhumed the victim’s body.
Detectives released photos of the unidentified woman’s jewelry to the news media. Family members identified a pendant worn by Carnahan. Authorities compared and matched the family’s DNA to Carnahan, and they later released her body to her family for a proper burial.
But investigators still did not know who killed Carnahan. Prosecutors said the Washington attorney general’s office initiative to eliminate the statewide backlog of untested sexual assault kits led to the unrelated rape investigation.
The sexual assault kit in the Spokane rape case remained untested until earlier this year. Prosecutors said that case will not continue forward as the statute of limitations has expired, and the victim has since died.
FBI database leads to arrest
Results from the Spokane sexual assault kit test were uploaded to the CODIS system — the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System — which found that the DNA there also matched the DNA evidence collected from the Carnahan scene. Prosecutors said the evidence identified Carpenter as the suspect.
El Dorado County investigators said they found probable cause evidence to arrest Carpenter on suspicion of murder and traveled to Washington to assist the Spokane Police Department in his arrest.
A $3 million federal grant awarded to the Washington Attorney General’s Office’s paid for the testing of the 1994 sexual assault kit, which allowed authorities to upload the suspect’s DNA profile to CODIS.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said “hard work and cross-state collaboration” resulted in the successful conclusion to an unsolved case.
“Cases like this illustrate the need to test every sexual assault kit and get their DNA profiles loaded into the federal database,” Ferguson said in a news release. “Every untested kit could be a potential break in a cold case.”
Carpenter was booked Monday afternoon at the Spokane County Jail, where he awaits extradition to face the murder charge in California.
Investigators asked anybody with information relevant to the El Dorado County murder case or about Carpenter to call the El Dorado Cold Case Task Force at 530-621-4590 or send an email to coldcasetaskforce@edcda.us.
This story was originally published March 1, 2023 at 6:53 PM.
