Authorities said Wednesday that they solved two decades-old cold cases that stunned Southern California, arresting suspects in the separate killings of a boy and a girl who disappeared while walking home from school.
Linda O'Keefe was strangled in 1973, and William Tillett was suffocated in 1990. They were both 11.
James Neal, 72, was arrested in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and charged with murder with special circumstances in Linda's death — a case that has long shaken the seaside community of Newport Beach, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said.
This photo shows a poster of James Neal during a news conference at the Orange County District Attorney's office in Santa Ana, Calif., Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2019. Cold case detectives have arrested suspects including Neal in the separate Southern California murders of a girl in 1973 and a boy in 1990, authorities said Wednesday. Both victims disappeared while walking home from school. (Paul BersebachThe Orange County Register via AP)
"The detectives dogged this case," Spitzer told reporters, saying advances in technology have made it possible to close old cases. "We have every opportunity in the world to solve so many of these cold cases that we never had hope in the past of solving."
Authorities published sketches of the suspect last year based on genealogical evidence taken from a DNA sample at the crime scene. Investigators got a hit from a genealogical database earlier this year and got a DNA sample from Neal that matched, Spitzer said.
Neal was expected in court in Colorado on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. The voicemail was full on a number listed for Neal.
This undated photo provided by the Inglewood Police Department shows 11-year-old William Tillett, who kidnapped and killed while walking home from school in Inglewood, Calif., on May 24, 1990. Prosecutors said Edward Donell Thomas of Pomona, Calif., was arrested and charged on Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019, with the boy's murder. (Inglewood Police Department via AP)
Linda was walking home from summer school in Newport Beach on July 6, 1973, when she vanished. She was last seen talking to a stranger in a van and never made it home, Newport Beach police Chief Jon Lewis said.
Her body was found in a ditch the next day. She had been strangled, Lewis said.
Neal lived in Southern California when Linda was killed and went to Florida soon afterward, where he changed his name, prosecutors said.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer announces the arrest of James Neal, shown in a poster at left, in the 1973 murder of 11-year-old Linda O'Keefe during a news conference at the OCDA's office in Santa Ana, Calif., Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2019. Cold case detectives have arrested suspects including Neal in the separate Southern California murders of O'Keefe in 1973 and a boy in 1990, authorities said Wednesday. Both victims disappeared while walking home from school. (Paul BersebachThe Orange County Register via AP)
Authorities said they never gave up the search for her killer, even after decades passed and her parents had died. Linda's two living sisters have been told about the arrest, authorities said.
In the 1990 case, a 50-year-old Edward Donell Thomas was in custody in connection with the kidnapping and killing of William Tillett outside Los Angeles. Prosecutors said they charged him with murder Tuesday.
Investigators didn't say what linked Thomas to the slaying. William disappeared while walking home from school in Inglewood on May 24, 1990. His body was found in a dark carport later that day. The coroner determined he had been suffocated.
Thomas, a resident of Pomona, was being held without bail. It wasn't known if he has an attorney. Arraignment is scheduled for April 4.
Associated Press writer Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A soon-to-be-released Biden administration review of Israel's use of U.S.-provided weapons in its war in Gaza does not conclude that Israel has violated the terms for their use, according to three people who have been briefed on the matter.
The report is expected to be sharply critical of Israel, even though it doesn't conclude that Israel violated terms of U.S.-Israel weapons agreements, according to one U.S. official.
The administration's findings on its close ally's conduct of the war, a first-of-its-kind assessment that was compelled by President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats in Congress, comes after seven months of airstrikes, ground fighting and aid restrictions that have claimed the lives of nearly 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
Biden has tried to walk an ever-finer line in his support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against Hamas. He has faced growing rancor at home and abroad over the soaring Palestinian death toll and the onset of famine, caused in large part by Israeli restrictions on the movement of food and aid into Gaza. Tensions have been heightened further in recent weeks by Netanyahu’s pledge to expand the Israeli military’s offensive in the crowded southern city of Rafah, despite Biden's adamant opposition.
Biden is in the closing months of a tough reelection campaign against Donald Trump. He faces demands from many Democrats that he cut the flow of offensive weapons to Israel and denunciation from Republicans who accuse him of wavering on support for Israel at its time of need.
Two U.S. officials and a third person briefed on the findings of the national security memorandum to be submitted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Congress discussed the findings before the report's release. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public.
A senior Biden administration official said the memorandum is expected to be released later Friday, but declined to comment on its conclusions.
Axios first reported on the memorandum's findings.
The Democratic administration took one of the first steps toward conditioning military aid to Israel in recent days when it paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs out of concern over Israel’s threatened offensive on Rafah, a southern city crowded with more than a million Palestinians, a senior administration official said.
The presidential directive, agreed to in February, obligated the Defense and State departments to conduct “an assessment of any credible reports or allegations that such defense articles and, as appropriate, defense services, have been used in a manner not consistent with international law, including international humanitarian law.”
The agreement also obligated them to tell Congress whether they deemed that Israel has acted to “arbitrarily to deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly,” delivery of any U.S.-supported humanitarian aid into Gaza for starving civilians there.
Lawmakers and others who advocated for the review said Biden and previous American leaders have followed a double standard when enforcing U.S. laws governing how foreign militaries use U.S. support, an accusation the Biden administration denies. They had urged the administration to make a straightforward legal determination of whether there was credible evidence that specific Israeli airstrikes on schools, crowded neighborhoods, medical workers, aid convoys and other targets, and restrictions on aid shipments into Gaza, violated the laws of war and human rights.
Their opponents argued that a U.S. finding against Israel would weaken it at a time it is battling Hamas and other Iran-backed groups. Any sharply critical findings on Israel are sure to add to pressure on Biden to curb the flow of weapons and money to Israel’s military and further heighten tensions with Netanyahu’s hard-right government over its conduct of the war against Hamas.
Any finding against Israel also could endanger Biden’s support in this year's presidential elections from some voters who keenly support Israel.
At the time the White House agreed to the review, it was working to head off moves from Democratic lawmakers and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to start restricting shipments of weapons to Israel.
Israel launched its offensive after an Oct. 7 assault into Israel, led by Hamas, killed about 1,200 people. Two-thirds of the Palestinians killed since then have been women and children, according to local health officials. U.S. and U.N. officials say Israeli restrictions on food shipments since Oct. 7 have brought on full-fledged famine in northern Gaza.
Human rights groups long have accused Israeli security forces of committing abuses against Palestinians and have accused Israeli leaders of failing to hold those responsible to account. In January, in a case brought by South Africa, the top U.N. court ordered Israel to do all it could to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive.
Israel says it is following all U.S. and international law, that it investigates allegations of abuse by its security forces and that its campaign in Gaza is proportional to the existential threat it says is posed by Hamas.
Biden in December said “indiscriminate bombing” was costing Israel international backing. After Israeli forces targeted and killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in April, the Biden administration for the first time signaled it might cut military aid to Israel if it didn’t change its handling of the war and humanitarian aid.
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, in the 1980s and early 1990s, were the last presidents to openly hold back weapons or military financing to try to push Israel to change its actions in the region or toward Palestinians.
A report to the Biden administration by an unofficial, self-formed panel including military experts, academics and former State Department officials detailed Israeli strikes on aid convoys, journalists, hospitals, schools and refugee centers and other sites. They argued that the civilian death toll in those strikes — such as an Oct. 31 strike on an apartment building reported to have killed 106 civilians — was disproportionate to the blow against any military target.
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at a hospital in Rafah, Gaza, Friday, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Ismael Abu Dayyah)
U.S. President Joe Biden boards Marine One at Moffett Airfield in Mountain View, Calif., Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Pool Photo via AP)
