Rape kits from two women led to a 1979 arrest for the murder of one of them.

More than 40 years later, authorities have arrested a suspect in the murder of a woman at a South Lake Tahoe campsite in 1979, CBS Sacramento reports.

Harold W. Carpenter, 63, was arrested after investigators found a DNA match to an unrelated crime in Washington State. He is being held without bail in a Spokane County jail on fugitive charges pending extradition to California on a murder warrant, the Eldorado County District Attorney said in a statement.

Patricia Carnahan, Eldorado County District Attorney’s Office

Patricia Carnahan was found strangled, beaten and left for dead in September 1979, and despite gathering evidence, including a sexual assault kit that provided a DNA sample, no suspects were arrested in connection with her death.

In 2015, Eldorado County Unsolved Homicide investigators reopened the case. A forensic anthropologist exhumed her body and detectives placed photographs of her jewelry in the newspaper, leading family members to identify the pendant worn by Carnahan.

After comparing and confirming the DNA of the victim’s family, the body was handed over to them for proper burial.

Harold Carpenter

The FBI’s combined DNA index system, known as the CODIS system, recently found that DNA collected from a 1994 Washington rape victim matched DNA evidence collected at Carnahan, identifying the suspect in her murder as Harold Carpenter.

“This is the 13th case solved since the creation of the Cold Case Task Force,” said Eldorado County District Attorney Vern Pearson. “I am proud that our cold case unit is one of the most successful of its kind in the United States.

“Unfortunately, Ms. Carnahan was buried under the headstone of an ‘unidentified woman’. Thanks to the tireless dedication of our investigators, she was identified and returned to her family. Now, thanks to the multilateral cooperation of numerous agencies, her killer will finally be brought to justice.”

It is one of the oldest unsolved murders in the country, and was solved through sexual assault DNA analysis conducted through CODIS, according to the district attorney’s office.

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