Another black is arrested for a decades-old murder, all thanks to the white man’s voodoo: DNA testing.
Forty years to the day of her gruesome death, Sacramento law enforcement officials announced Friday an arrest in the stabbing death of Robin Gisela Brooks, who was 20 years old when she was sexually assaulted and killed in her Rosemont apartment on April 24, 1980.
Phillip Lee Wilson, 71, was arrested at his home on Thursday, Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, Sgt. Tess Deterding said at Friday’s news conference alongside Sheriff Scott Jones and Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.
Wilson is being held without bail at the Sacramento County Main Jail on one charge of murder.
It was unclear how Wilson knew Brooks. Deterding said further details about the case would not be disclosed at this time.
Brooks had moved to the Sacramento area from New York six months before her death and worked as a clerk at a doughnut shop on Keifer Boulevard and Tallyho Drive, according to The Sacramento Bee’s article at the time.
At the time of the slaying, Wilson lived in a rented home on remote Happy Lane, which borders Mather Field and is less than two miles from where Brooks lived.
Brooks’ body was discovered by a co-worker who checked on her after she didn’t show up for work.
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Her body was found face down on her waterbed, which had also been pierced in the stabbing. Deterding said that Brooks was found with multiple stab wounds and was sexually assaulted in the crime.
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The killer apparently cut himself during the assault and his DNA profile was uploaded to the Combined DNA Index System database.
Investigators continued to pursue the case and in 2016 asked for the public’s help again in solving it. Some investigators, such as Sergeant Micki Links, continued to investigate well after retirement.
In the last three years, law enforcement was able to use what Schubert called the “greatest tool ever given to law enforcement:” investigative genetic genealogy.