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Amy B Wang
Generalist journalist covering national and last-minute news
The day of Linda Ann's death O 'Keefe, the morning of July in Newport Beach, California, was cooler than normal. The 11-year-old girl with blue hair and blue eyes went to summer school, about 800 meters away – but had to walk home in the afternoon.
It was July 6, 1973, a Friday. When O'Keefe did not go home right away, there was little worry at the beginning. But when night falls and her whereabouts are still unknown, her parents called the police and desperately swept the neighborhood in vain.
Investigators would later learn that the girl was last seen at an intersection talking to a stranger in a turquoise van. The next morning, O'Keefe's body was found in a ditch. She had been strangled and was still wearing a blue and white floral print dress that her mother had sewn to her.
His death would remain unresolved for more than four decades.
On Tuesday, nearly 46 years after the end of O'Keefe's life, the authorities arrested a man suspected of being his murderer: a 72-year-old man living in Colorado, James Neal.
The police were unobtrusive about how she had solved the problem but said they had received information in January that prompted them to open an investigation into Neal, who was living in Orange County at the time of the murder of O & # 39; Keefe but who later moved to Colorado.
Through monitoring, a sample of Neal's DNA was obtained – a sample that corresponds to a sample taken from the body of O & # 39; Keefe in 1973. Neal was arrested on Tuesday "without incident" in Colorado Springs, said the Newport Beach police chief on Wednesday at a press conference. .
The arrest seemed to put an end to an infamous affair that had haunted and motivated "generations of investigators" at the Newport Beach Police Department, said Lewis.
"Linda's face and her memory have been with us since the day it happened," he said. "Her photo is hanging in our detective division, where our people see her every day as a reminder of her and why we continue to pursue this business."
O'Keefe's two parents have since died, but two sisters have been in mourning, but the police have told them news of Neal's arrest.
"As you can imagine, it was a hard news to receive," Lewis said. "It's bittersweet to hear that, yes, this case has been resolved. But again, it's a reminder of what happened. It was a difficult conversation … for me personally. On one side, we were grateful to have this conversation and to close the situation a bit. "
The Orange County attorney, Todd Spitzer, also described the arrest as "bitter-sweet", pointing out that he was 12 years old when his 11-year-old son was killed. But he congratulated the Newport Beach police for persisting over the decades.
Spitzer said that a DNA sample had been recovered from O'Keefe after his body was found and loaded into a database where he never corresponded.
"This sample has stayed in the system for a long time," said Spitzer.
Spitzer refused to specify how they were able to locate Neal and identify him as a suspect after 45 years, but he said the police had received a "pointer notification via genealogical DNA", suggesting perhaps that the authorities had discovered the DNA of a close Neal would have involved as a possible match.
This DNA "hit" came in January, said Spitzer. After monitoring and obtaining a DNA sample from Neal himself, the police were confident enough to make an arrest, he added.
Spitzer also declined to confirm whether Neal had family members or children, claiming that the case was under investigation.
"My office will never forget cold cases," Spitzer said in a statement. "Our heart goes to the victim and his family, in this case, having to endure decades without answers. We will ensure that the defendant is fairly and fairly held accountable in court. "
[‘My killer was never found’: Police live tweet a murdered girl’s last day alive in 1973]
In July, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the death of O & # 39; Keefe, the Newport Beach Police Department "live tweeted" Linda's story – in her voice, from the point of view of his last day – in the hope of sensitizing the people to his cold case and shaking it. ahead of new clues about his killer.
The police hoped that telling the story of the girl through the modern medium would help people of another generation to bond emotionally to the case. Meagan Flynn, of the Washington Post, used details from decades-long investigator records to relay the last hours of O 'Keefe, as well as frantic searches of his family, as if they took place in real time.
At 6:42 pm, six hours had passed since her mother heard from her. O. Keefe's parents reported his disappearance to the Newport Beach Police Department, convinced that the latter had not simply fled with friends for not having received a ride. Helicopters, police jeeps and search crews scoured the area for O'Keefe traces. One person, a woman who knew nothing about the disappearance of a girl, was close enough to hear it and it was then too late.
Just before midnight, "a lady over Back Bay hears a female voice outside, screaming," Stop, you hurt me, "tweeted the police on behalf of O'Keefe." She's listening but n & # She does not know I'm missing, that I'll be dead in the morning, that I'll be found a few hundred yards from her house.
As "Linda" noted in the tweets of July, her case would generate many theories and a portrait of a "person of interest", but would eventually become cold.
Until 46 years later.
"Technology has caught up with the law," Spitzer said Wednesday.
Spitzer noted that the DNA police had obtained had no connection with the live broadcast by the O'Keefe's last day department, but that the exercise had served to revive the case in the spirit public.
"This did not necessarily lead to identification [of the suspect], "he said." But it created awareness … and opened the door for us to continue this case with renewed effort. "
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