DNA Testing Links Negro to Murder of Two Women (One Confirmed White) in 1980s

Horace Van Vaultz Jr.

If there’s one thing these DNA tests are good at, it’s proving that a dindu did it.

Patch:

One of law enforcement’s newest crime-solving tools was used to bring capital murder charges Friday against a Bakersfield man accused of killing two young women in the 1980s, including a Reseda resident whose body was found in the trunk of her car in a Burbank parking lot, police and prosecutors said.

The charges against Horace Van Vaultz Jr. mark the first criminal prosecution in Los Angeles County involving investigative genetic genealogy, in which detectives access commercial DNA databases, load DNA material from the crime and find a relative’s match that can point toward a suspect and collect their DNA, according to Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey.

Van Vaultz, 64, is charged with the June 9, 1986, asphyxiation killing of 22-year-old Mary Duggan in the San Fernando Valley and the July 16, 1981, strangulation of Selena Keough, a 20-year-old mother who was killed in San Bernardino County and dumped under bushes in Montclair.

Mary Duggan.