Forty years after a 5-year-old woman was raped and killed in a small metropolis on the Monterey Peninsula, authorities have charged a former soldier together with her homicide.
Robert Lanoue, 70, of Reno was charged final week with one rely of first-degree homicide with particular circumstance allegations that he killed Anne Pham whereas committing kidnapping and a lewd act on a baby youthful than 14, in line with the Monterey County district legal professional’s workplace.
Anne was kidnapped Jan. 21, 1982, whereas strolling to her kindergarten class at Highland Elementary College in Seaside, close to Monterey Bay. Two days later, her stays have been discovered outdoors Ft. Ord, a now-closed U.S. Military publish east of the city.
The Seaside Police Division, FBI and U.S. Military’s Felony Investigation Division investigated the killing earlier than the case went chilly for practically 40 years.
Anne was the kid of refugees from Vietnam who fled the nation after the autumn of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in 1975, the Mercury Information reported. Anne’s father, Tuong Pham, moved to Seaside to make a residing as a fisherman, in line with the Mercury Information. She was killed 4 years after the household moved to the Monterey Peninsula.
Lanoue was 29 on the time of Anne’s killing and lived in Seaside, in line with the district legal professional’s workplace. He was a soldier stationed at Ft. Ord.
The case was reopened in 2020 by the Monterey County district legal professional’s workplace’s newly fashioned chilly case process drive.
Investigators used “a brand new sort of DNA testing not beforehand accessible to earlier investigators” to determine Lanoue as a suspect, the district legal professional’s workplace mentioned.
A $535,000 federal grant that the chilly case process drive acquired contains provisions that enable investigators to make use of non-public laboratories that hint household genealogical knowledge, in line with the U.S. Division of Justice. An identical technique was utilized in 2018 to trace down the Golden State Killer, one of many nation’s most infamous chilly instances.
Lanoue is a registered intercourse offender and was convicted in 1998 of lewdness with a minor in addition to possession of kid pornography, in line with Nevada jail data. He spent about 20 years in jail in Nevada.
He’s being held in a Washoe County, Nev., jail, and authorities are awaiting his extradition to California.
