Cold Case Closed After 42 Years As Killer's Caught On 73rd Birthday

A cold case has been closed after a California man, Phillip Lee Wilson, was convicted on his 73rd birthday for the rape and murder of 20-year-old Robin Brooks.

On Wednesday, March 9, Wilson was convicted by a jury for the 1980 death of Brooks in her Rosemont apartment.

According to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, Wilson was arrested in April 2020, due to the strength of forensic DNA evidence and investigative genetic genealogy.

At the time, law enforcement compared the techniques used to capture Wilson to those used in the Golden State Killer case, which led to the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer, in 2018.

The case began on April 24, 1980, when a friend noticed that Brooks didn't show up for work; she later found Brooks' body inside her apartment.

Exactly forty years after, on April 24, 2020, Wilson was arrested.

Wilson's attorney tried to argue that Wilson had consensual sex with Brooks and that she was killed by her sister's boyfriend, who has also since died.

The jury, however, found Wilson guilty. Brooks' sister Maria Arrick said she was thankful the case had finally been solved.

Arrick said, 'I just never gave up hope, I just knew it.' She added, 'I feel like I can go on with my life now,' Law and Crime reports.

'I think it absorbed a piece of who I was. I feel good that this gives other people hope in the future that justice can be served even after 42 years,' Arrick noted.

News of the conviction came on Wilson's birthday, CBS reports.

Micki Links, a Sheriff's Office cold case detective said of the case: 'There is justice in the world, and he will spend all his birthdays now in prison. I wish we found him earlier, but finally, justice has been done.'

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert also spoke of the investigative tools used, saying that were integral to closing the cold case.

She said: 'This new tool, as I’ve said before, is the perfect marriage between science and dedicated police work'.

'With these two working together, science and really extraordinary police work, in this case, Phillip Wilson now stands charged in a felony complaint in Sacramento County with the rape-murder of Robin Brooks.'

Wilson is scheduled to be sentenced on April 22.

If you have experienced a bereavement and would like to speak with someone in confidence contact Cruse Bereavement Care via their national helpline on 0808 808 1677