Five-year-old girl’s murder finally solved 40 years after death by DNA testing

A 40-year-old murder case has finally been closed after a man was charged with killing a five-year-old girl.

The young Anne Pham disappeared when walking to kindergarten on January 21, 1982.

Robert Lanoue, 70, was the man charged with one count of first-degree murder alongside kidnapping and a lewd act on a child under the age of 14.

READ MORE: Dead brother of girl who was 'cut up for kebab meat' failed to 'get over' her death

Lanoue sexually assaulted Pham and strangled her to death before dumping her body, which was found at at Fort Ord, a former US army base and national park.

Anne was a student at Highland Elementary School in Seaside, California while Lanoue was 29-years-old at the time, stationed at Fort Ord as a soldier.

A collaboration between the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Task Force and the Seaside Police Department in 2020 meant evidence from the case for DNA testing was submitted.

The case was reopened after the district attorney's office said that the authorities employed a "new type of DNA testing not previously available to earlier investigations".

• 

  Delivery driver found half-naked woman left dead by serial killer who bit her breast

The DNA led them to Lanoue where California investigators obtained a warrant for his arrest on July 6 where they found that the 70-year-old, who is a registered sex offender, was already in prison for violating his parole.

Lanoue was convicted in 1998 of lewdness with a minor and possessing child pornography and spent around 20 years in prison in his native Nevada.

Anne was murdered just four years after her family moved to the area as she was a child of refugees who fled Vietnam due to the fall of Saigon in 1975.

READ NEXT:

• Teen cowgirl raped and murdered by 'big brother' who said she died 'far too soon'

• Mum and gran charged with murder after girl, 9, killed by head lice infestation

• Evil schoolgirl who stabbed sister to death 'would have killed sooner' for a McDonald's

Source: Read Full Article