Using new breakthroughs in DNA forensics, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office has charged a San Jose man, who is already in prison for a brutal murder of a woman, with another murder, 39 years ago.
Christopher Holland, 67, was arraigned last week with the 1983 rape and murder of 21-year-old Tara Marowski.
This is the second time he has been charged in this crime. In 2015, Santa Clara prosecutors were forced to drop the case when a judge legally separated it from the slaying of Cynthia Munoz. Holland was found guilty of that murder and is serving life without the possibility of parole. If convicted in this case, Holland faces life in prison. Holland will next appear in court on Oct. 27, 2022.
“With this prosecution comes a message that you will hear often from me and this Office as we scour old cases for new evidence: we do not forget violent crimes and we do not forget victims,” DA Jeff Rosen said. “We never gave up on Tara Marowski.”
In late March 1983, Marowski was seen leaving a San Jose bar with Holland. Five days later, on April 2, 1983, Marowski’s partially clothed body was found in the back seat of her car, parked on a residential street in San Jose. A possible cause of death is strangulation.
In 2007, Holland was charged with another rape and murder, of Munoz, which occurred on Aug. 7, 1983. In 2011, while that case was pending, he was charged with the murder of Marowski. The two cases were consolidated. In 2015, the trial judge severed the cases. Holland was convicted on March 23, 2015, for the murder of Munoz. The murder of Ms. Marowski then proceeded to trial. The trial court excluded all evidence of the Munoz case. On May 22, 2015, the Marowski case was dismissed.
Additional forensic analysis was done in 2021 based upon a new method of probabilistic genotyping. The report concluded Holland’s DNA was on the victim.
In addition to Marowski and Munoz, four women known to Holland have testified that he either sexually assaulted them, or strangled them, or both, throughout the 1980s and 1990s. These cases were uncharged but were used as evidence in the Munoz trial.
Republished courtesy of County of Santa Clara Office of the DA.