The decedent’s partially clothed body was discovered at the bottom of a ravine in the Topanga Canyon area of Malibu.
An autopsy determined that the teenage girl had been beaten and strangled.
Jose Luis Garcia was arrested in October 2020 for the crime.
Serology evidence was collected from the victim after her body was found, and a DNA profile was uploaded into state and federal DNA databases as that of an unknown offender. Although an extensive investigation was conducted, no match was identified through the DNA databases and the case remained unsolved.
A DNA sample was collected and loaded into the state’s DNA database after Garcia was arrested by Los Angeles police officers in 2019 on an unrelated crime.
A detective assigned to the Unsolved Case Unit learned of a match of that sample to evidence from the 1996 slaying.
Detectives contacted him at his then-residence in Fontana, and obtained a DNA swab.
Serologists from the sheriff’s crime lab confirmed the DNA match, and the detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Garcia.
Garcia was subsequently taken into custody in Dallas by a U.S. Marshals Service task force after moving to Texas.