Suspect In 1984 Killing Was San Diego Police Employee
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A retired San Diego police criminalist apparently killed himself after being linked to the murder of a 14-year-old girl three decades ago, authorities said Thursday.
The body of Kevin Charles Brown, 62, was found Tuesday at Cuyacama Ranch State Park in the San Diego County town of Julian and his death was being investigated as a suicide, police said, although details were not immediately released.
Police had been working with the county district attorney's office and were planning to arrest Brown, who had been informed that he was under investigation, homicide Lt. Paul Rorrison said.
"I can only surmise that was part of the reason" that Brown apparently committed suicide, Rorrison said.
In November 2012, cold-case detectives used DNA evidence to link Brown and another man to the killing of Claire Hough, a 14-year-old girl who was found at Torrey Pines State Beach in August 1984, police said. She had been beaten and strangled, sand was stuffed in her in her mouth and one of her breasts had been cut off.
Hough, from Cranston, Rhode Island, was visiting her grandparents in the area when she was killed.
Brown was a civilian criminalist in the San Diego police laboratory from 1982 to his retirement in 2002 but he never worked on the Hough case, Rorrison said.
Brown was a "generalist" whose job would have included analyzing narcotics and performing other types of evidence work, Rorrison said.
The other suspect, Ronald Clyde Tatro, was 67 when he died in a boating accident in 2011 in Surgoinsville, Tennessee, Rorrison said.
The transient's body was found down a river and there was no evidence of foul play, he said.
Rorrison declined to say whether the two men knew the girl or had earlier been suspects in her death. However, he said DNA testing — which didn't exist at the time of the girl's death — proved to be a crucial piece of evidence.
Police are still investigating the similar killing of a 15-year-old Lakewood girl six years earlier.
The naked body of Barbara Nantais was found at Torrey Pine State Beach in August 1978. She had been beaten and strangled and one breast had been sliced.
Nantais and some friends had been sleeping on the beach. Her boyfriend was struck in the head and badly injured.
Rorrison said there was no direct evidence linking the two killings.
"We are not treating them as related cases," he said.
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