2014/11/04

U-T San Diego October 31, 2014: Warrants reveal evidence in 1984 killing

Retired SDPD criminalist's sperm found on vaginal swab

A retired San Diego police criminalist connected through DNA to the 1984 murder of 14-year-old Claire Hough apparently told a friend earlier this year that he’d photographed the girl on Torrey Pines State Beach shortly before she turned up dead, according to search warrant affidavits unsealed Friday.

San Diego police detectives had been gathering evidence against Kevin Charles Brown, 63, over the past year, after a DNA examination found his sperm on a vaginal swab taken from her body, the records state. Police say they were close to arresting Brown when he hanged himself last week.

Brown, who was first interviewed about the case in January, denied knowing Claire or Ronald Tatro, the other man implicated in the killing. The DNA examination had also identified Tatro’s DNA on blood from Claire’s clothing and in the broken zipper of her jeans, according to the affidavits, documents submitted by investigators to obtain search warrants. Tatro died in 2011 in Tennessee. Brown, a 20-year veteran of the San Diego police crime lab, told investigators that his DNA must have shown up as a result of lab cross-contamination. But investigators said Brown never handled any of the evidence in the case. more