Woman found slain on hilltop in 1991, California cops say. Now DNA helps solve case

Don Sweeney
·1 min read

A cold case involving a woman whose body was found on a hilltop has been cracked 33 years later, California police reported.

Danielle Clause, 42, was found dead on July 16, 1991, the Ventura Police Department said in a May 7 news release. She had been sexually assaulted and died of blows to her head.

Tips and clues ran dry, leaving detectives unable to solve the case, police said.

But in 2021, the department retested evidence for DNA, police said, and forensic genetic genealogy helped establish a family tree for the attacker.

Police said they were able to identify Larry Devon Welch, who died in 1999, as the perpetrator. Welch and Clause had no prior connection.

“My sister was so much more than a victim of a brutal murder,” sister Marcie Forte said in the release. “She was (an) artist, a daughter, a sister, a mother, and a wife. She was a good person with a mighty soul, and she was taken way too young.”

Forte said she did not believe police would ever crack the case because of the long timeline and crush of newer cases to investigate. She credited the dedication and hard work of Ventura police with solving her sister’s murder.

“I’m so grateful that I lived to see at least a meter of justice and that they found out who did this,” she said in the release.

The department continues to investigate 25 cold cases involving killings, missing people and unidentified bodies, police said.

Ventura is about a 70-mile drive northwest from Los Angeles.

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