NORTH COAST, Calf. – The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office said Tuesday that its detectives – assisted by state forensics experts – have successfully identified a suspect in the 1988 murder of a 20-year-old Fort Bragg woman.
Robert James Parks of Fort Bragg, 27 years old at the time of the murder, is believed to have murdered Georgina Pacheco, whose body was found on a roadside in 1988, according to a report from Liz Evangelatos of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office.
Evangelatos said DNA samples taken from the family of Parks – who committed suicide in 1998 – helped detectives key in on him as the person responsible for killing Pacheco.
At 8 a.m. Sept. 10, 1988, Rodney Elam, a resident of Pearl Ranch Road in Fort Bragg, was walking a dog down the road when it alerted to an area of thick brush just off of the roadway, Evangelatos said.
Elam followed the dog into the brush and located the remains of a nude female. Elam contacted the sheriff's office and reported his discovery, according to Evangelatos.
A sheriff's deputy responded to the area and secured the scene. Sheriff's detectives arrived at the location and began to process the scene for evidence. Evangelatos said they discovered that the deceased female had an orange and black nylon weave rope wrapped tightly around her neck. They also observed that the deceased female had blunt force injuries to her head.
Evangelatos said detectives were able to determine that the female had been killed at an unknown location and then transported to Pearl Ranch Road where her body was hidden in thick brush.
Later that same day, detectives were able to positively identify the victim as Georgina Pacheco. Evangelatos said Pacheco had been reported as a missing person on Sept. 4, 1988, to the Fort Bragg Police Department.
During the investigation it was discovered that Pacheco was last seen on Sept. 1, 1988, when she was picked up at her place of employment, the Sea Pal Restaurant in Fort Bragg, by Parks. Evangelatos said Parks was a Fort Bragg resident and self-employed commercial fisherman who owned property within two miles of where Pacheco's body had been discovered.
An autopsy of Pacheco determined her cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head as well as strangulation. A sexual assault examination was conducted on Pacheco at the time of the autopsy, which included taking swabs to collect DNA. Evangelatos said clippings from Pacheco's fingernails also were taken in hopes of locating physical evidence. Detectives felt the blunt force injuries were consistent with having come from a tire iron or an abalone pry bar.
The evidence recovered during the autopsy was used to determine a specific blood type. At that time the technology to identify people based on DNA did not exist, Evangelatos said.
On July 21, 1998, Parks telephoned a family member and advised that he was going to commit suicide by sinking his fishing vessel in the Long Beach Harbor. Authorities from Long Beach Harbor were notified and located the sunken fishing vessel. Parks' lifeless body was recovered from the ship, according to Evangelatos.
In early 2000 the ability to identify criminal suspects through DNA was a relatively new investigative tool for law enforcement. Sheriff's Det. Kevin Bailey submitted some of the evidence recovered during the Pacheco autopsy to the Department of Justice DNA laboratory, Evangelatos said.
Because of a backlog on DNA evidence the Department of Justice was not able to provide any results until 2005. At that time the DNA laboratory was only able to determine that the DNA recovered from Pacheco at autopsy was male sperm, Evangelatos said.
Evangelatos said the laboratory had enough of a DNA profile where it could be used to exclude suspects, but not enough to run through the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, in an attempt to identify a suspect. Det. Bailey left the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office in 2005 and took a position with the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office.
The Pacheco case was then reassigned to another detective with the sheriff's office. In 2009 Det. Andrew Porter took over the case, Evangelatos said. Porter arranged for the original swabs and the fingernail clippings to be sent to the DNA laboratory.
Most of the swab samples had been consumed during blood typing examinations in the early 1990s. Regardless, the DNA laboratory was able to obtain a complete DNA profile from the wooden sticks that the cotton swabs had been attached to Evangelatos said.
Additionally, DOJ Senior Criminalist Meghan Mannion-Grey was able to extract a partial profile from the swabs taken of Pacheco's hands, as well as from the fingernail clippings. Evangelatos said this partial profile matched the complete DNA profile that had been extracted from the swab stick.
Det. Porter then obtained DNA samples from Parks' family members. He submitted these samples and Mannion-Grey was able to compare them to the DNA profile extracted from the evidence, Evangelatos said.
Mannion-Grey was able to positively identify Parks as the contributor of the semen located on the swab stick and the contributor of the blood found on Pacheco's hands and under her fingernails, according to Evangelatos.
Based on these findings the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office has listed Robert James Parks as the suspect in the murder of Georgina Pacheco and has closed this cold case, Evangelatos said.