Finally!
More than thirty years ago, a woman was found dead on a Ventura hillside. The 42-year old victim, Danielle Clause, was on found July 16, 1991 close to the top of Tioga Drive near downtown Ventura, in California. The murder has remained unsolved all this time.
But on Tuesday investigators released a statement which said that thanks to the use of newly-advanced genetic genealogical techniques, they’ve been able to use DNA left at the scene to identify the perpetrator. After 33 years, the identity of the Clause’s murderer is finally known.
The autopsy of Clause’s body conducted at the time of her death revealed that she had been violated and suffered multiple blunt-force head injuries, the latter of which caused her death.
According to the Ventura Police Department’s statement, the initial investigation into Clause’s murder went to great lengths over the course of many years. Despite the tireless work of investigators, who explored every available avenue, the case was eventually suspended and moved over to the cold case department.
Then, in 2021, detectives working cold cases picked up the hunt for Danielle’s killer. They opened the evidence files and submitted DNA gathered from the crime scene for re-testing. Comparing the sequence to those on file from popular consumer genealogy sites and other genetic databases available to law enforcement, they were able to construct a family tree for the murderer.
After collecting family DNA samples, the killer was identified as a man named Larry Welch.
Welch, however, will not face trial. He died in 1999. To date, police have not been able to establish any connection between Welch and Clause, aside from the crime itself.
Ventura Police released a quite lengthy video, which goes into considerable depth about the investigation, and the genealogical and forensic methods they used to identify Welch.
Their methods build upon those used to identify and capture the notorious Golden State Killer in 2018.
