Credit: El Dorado DA
A murder suspect in a 1979 cold case in California has been arrested after investigators found a DNA match to a rape committed 15 years later in Washington.
On Sept. 28, 1979, Patricia Carnahan was beaten, strangled and left for dead at a South Lake Tahoe campground. Investigators gathered evidence from the crime scene, including a sexual assault kit and DNA sample. But at the time, Carnahan’s identity was unknown, and no suspects arrested.
In 1994, the same man who allegedly murdered Carnahan raped a different woman in Washington state. Investigators collected a sexual assault kit, but the rape was deemed “unproveable.” The untested sexual assault kit was then placed on a storage shelf.
From unidentified to identified to justice
After authorities failed to identify her, Carnahan was buried in a nondescript grave marked "Unidentified Female” in 1994.
In 2015, investigators with the El Dorado County Cold Case Homicide Unit revived the case. First, a forensic anthropologist from California State University, Chico exhumed Carnahan’s body. Then, detectives placed photos of her jewelry in a newspaper. Family members soon identified a pendant worn by Carnahan. After comparing and confirming family DNA to the victim, the body was released to them for proper burial.
But, Carnahan’s killer remained a mystery—until the 1994 rape kit of a Washington woman was tested this year.
1994 rape in neighboring state
In April 1994, Harold Carpenter was arrested and booked into the Spokane County Jail on a second-degree rape charge after a Spokane woman reported that Carpenter physically and sexually assaulted her. After the case was deemed “unproveable,” it was suspended and charges were never formally filed. Still, the collected rape kit was preserved as evidence.
Then, in 2022, the Washington State Attorney General’s Office began its Sexual Assault Kit Initiative project to address the backlog of untested rape kits in the state. The Spokane Police Department (SPD) had approximately 1,500 untested kits dating back to 1981—including a 1994 rape case with Carpenter as the suspect.
The victim’s kit was submitted for DNA testing as part of the initiative in August 2022. In early February 2023, SPD detectives were contacted by a forensic scientist with the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab that the DNA from the 1994 rape hit not only to DNA in CODIS but to another cold case as well—the 1979 murder of Carnahan in El Dorado County.
With the evidence, investigators from El Dorado County developed probable cause to arrest Carpenter for murder and traveled to Spokane to assist SPD in the arrest. Unfortunately, the Washington rape case will not continue forward as the statute of limitations has expired and the victim is now deceased.
“Cases like this illustrate the need to test every sexual assault kit and get their DNA profiles loaded into the federal database,” said Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said. “Every untested kit could be a potential break in a cold case.”