He was found guilty of killing the four women. And was sentenced to death in 2006. And has been in San Quentin on death row for 25 years.
One of his victims was unidentified
His first victim found in the Ryan Slough stream remained unidentified. She remained a “Jane Doe” for over 20 years.
Although police had her DNA and ran it through databases periodically, they never got the match to reveal her identity. But advances in DNA science changed everything in 2023.
California justice officials teamed up with the private lab Othram to see if they could use the emerging investigative technique of forensic genealogy to build a family tree for Jane Doe.
The company also offers law enforcement tools and programs to infer kinship among individuals, both closely and distantly related. The lab uses a combination of STR and SNP testing, and forensic genome sequencing of DNA.
This led to a potential close relative of the victim, who confirmed that a female family member had been missing since the mid-1990s. Her name was Kerry Ann Cummings.
Kerry Ann Cummings identified
Cummings was mentally ill and had left home to couch-surf in Eugene, Oregon, in 1997, when she was 25. The family lost touch with her, tried to report her missing, and even hired a private detective.
