Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department officials have positively linked a 1981 double-homicide in Goleta to the Original Night Stalker, a serial killer believed to have terrorized Sacramento, Ventura, and Orange counties in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The department announced May 5 that with the help of advances in DNA technology, investigators were able to link the murders of 35-year-old Cheri Domingo and 27-year-old Gregory Sanchez to the Original Night Stalker, who is also known as the East Area Rapist.
Domingo and Sanchez were murdered in July 1981 while house-sitting on the 400 block of Toltee Way in Goleta. Their murders occurred 18 months after the similar murders of 44-year-old Robert Offerman and 35-year-old Alexandria Manning in a Goleta condominium in December 1979, but authorities have yet to affirmatively link the two incidents with physical evidence.
According to a department press release, advances in DNA profiling eventually determined that the East Area Rapist from Sacramento morphed into the Original Night Stalker after DNA from the crime scenes matched.
“With recent advancements in DNA profiling methods, it was important for us to push forward and reevaluate evidence in this case before it deteriorated and became useless,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said in the release. “As this investigation shows, we never close a murder case unless a suspect is identified and brought to justice.”
Sheriff’s Department cold case investigators Gray Kitzmann and Jeff Klapakis are being credited with the recent discovery. In making the connection, more than 50 pieces of evidence—such as blankets and bedspreads, where degraded traces of semen were found—were analyzed by California Department of Justice forensic technicians.
Though the identity of the killer remains a mystery, cold case investigators had long speculated that the two Goleta double-homicides were related. However, to date, no physical evidence from the Offerman-Manning murders has been positively linked to the Original Night Stalker, though officials are optimistic a similar breakthrough in that case may yet link the two.
The last crime attributed to the killer occurred in Orange County in 1986.
Officials emphasize that the Original Night Stalker should not be confused with convicted serial murderer Richard Ramirez, who also was also referred to as the Night Stalker, and who went on a crime spree in the mid-1980s. Ramirez is currently on death row in San Quentin State Prison.
This article appears in May 12-19, 2011.