The Los Angeles Police Department was able to solve a decades-old cold case thanks to a vital clue and developments in forensic technology.
For years, police had been unable to solve the murder of David R. Evans II, who was discovered beaten to death inside his home in Claremont on 13 October, 1985.
Evans, who worked as vice president of Pomona First Federal Bank, lived alone and police couldn't immediately identify anyone who could have been a suspect in the case.
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Officers arrived on the scene after being alerted to a robbery at the home, and Evans' 1980 Chevrolet Manza was found abandoned two hours later after being stolen from his house.
With no suspects to hone in on, the case went cold until 2006, when advancements in forensics such as fingerprint technology allowed police to further analyse evidence from the scene and identify a person of interest named Hillery Marcus Dupleasis.
In spite of the new finding, though, the investigation failed to further implicate Dupleasis and he wasn't officially named a suspect in the killing and in the theft of Evans' vehicle until 2020.
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Last week, Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva and Lt. Hugo Reynaga announced that first-degree murder charges have now been filed against Dupleasis.
The charges came after detectives looking into the old case found Dupleasis had lived in the San Gabriel Valley at the time of the murder, approximately a 25-minute drive from the area where Evans lived.
Officers were also able to link him to the car that had been stolen from Evans' home.
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A resolution in the case was a collaborative effort with Claremont Police, New York State Police, and the New York Department of Corrections, the Sheriff’s Department said, though a motive for the murder has not been determined.
LASD Detective Shawn McCarthy said investigators believed Evans and Dupleasis had never met before the killing.
Commenting on the resolution of the case, Lieutenant Hugo Reynaga said: "We're very happy this case is being solved. It's a 36-year-old case and in 2020, had we not got a phone call from a Claremont detective, this case would probably still be a cold case.
"Until he brought this case up to us, we were thinking that this case was a dead end."
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The suspect is already serving time in a New York prison for an unrelated murder and is awaiting extradition to Los Angeles County in the wake of the new charges.
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Topics: US News, Crime, Science, Technology
Emily Brown