Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni announced that Robert John Lanoue, age 70 of Reno, Nevada, has been charged with the January 1982 murder of 5-year-old Anne Pham of Seaside. Pham disappeared while walking to her kindergarten class at Highland Elementary School on January 21, 1982. She was never seen alive again. On January 23, 1982, her remains were discovered on the former Fort Ord.
The initial investigation did not result in any arrests, and Pham’s murder went unsolved for more than 40 years. In 2020, investigators with the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Task Force worked collaboratively with Seaside Police Department to reopen Pham’s case and submit items of evidence from the case for DNA testing. A new type of DNA testing not previously available to earlier investigators identified Lanoue as the suspect in Pham’s murder. Lanoue was 29 years old at the time of the homicide and lived in Seaside.
On July 6, 2022, investigators obtained a warrant for Lanoue’s arrest. Lanoue is currently being held in custody in the state of Nevada pending his extradition to California. Astrea Forensics, Dr. Ed Green of UC Santa Cruz, Parabon NanoLabs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, the Nevada State Police Division of Parole and Probation and the Regional Sex Offender Notification Unit provided valuable assistance to the Cold Case Task Force during the investigation.
Lanoue is charged with one count of first-degree murder, with special circumstance allegations that he murdered Pham while committing kidnapping and a lewd act on a child under the age of 14. Lanoue is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
In January 2022, the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Task Force received a $535,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance. The grant, titled “FY 2021 Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA,” provides funding to support forensic testing and investigative activities in the prosecution of cold cases where DNA from a suspect has been identified. Funding from the U.S. Department of Justice grant enabled the Cold Case Task Force to seek justice in Pham’s case.
The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Task Force was established in 2020 to investigate, solve and prosecute cold-case homicides in Monterey County. Since the Cold Case Task Force was founded, five people have been arrested and charged with six different homicides throughout Monterey County occurring between 1981 and 2017. In May 2022, Anthony Randall was convicted by a jury of murdering Lloyd Perkins, Jr. in Seaside on September 21, 1995. Seaside Police Department has worked extensively with the Task Force to re-examine its unsolved cases.
Republished courtesy of County of Monterery (Calif.)