March 2 (UPI) –A 63-year-old man has been arrested for the grisly murder of a woman in South Lake Tahoe more than 40 years ago after being linked to the crime through DNA retrieved from a 1994 rape kit.
The EL Dorado County District Attorney’s Office announced the arrest of Harold W. Carpenter in a statement Wednesday, saying he is accused of killing Patricia Carnahan on Sept. 28, 1979.
Carnahan’s body was found at a South Lake Tahoe campground. Her identity was unknown, and police said she was beaten, strangled and left for dead.
Evidence, including a sexual assault kit that retrieved DNA samples, was taken, but no suspect was arrested, and the body was buried in a grave marked “Unidentified Female.”
The case remained dormant for decades until 2015 when investigators with the El Dorado County Cold Case Homicide Unit decided to re-examine the woman’s murder and had her body exhumed.
“However, no suspect in the case was identified until this year as authorities in Washington State worked through testing a backlog of rape kits. One such kit was taken in 1994 but was deemed “unprovable” at the time.
“Once the kit was tested, the CODIS system — the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System — recently found that the DNA collected from the Washington victim also matched the DNA collected from Patricia Carnahan, identifying the suspect in her murder as Harold Carpenter,” the EL Dorado County District Attorney’s Office said.
