The photographs were found last fall when Horace Van Vaultz was arrested, the first case brought by the LA County District Attorney’s Office that relied, in part, on searches of genealogical DNA databases in order to identify an alleged killer.
The charges included the 1986 murder of Mary Duggan, whose body was found in the trunk of her own car parked near the 5 Freeway in Burbank. She was last seen at a bar on Vanowen in Reseda and a pizza restaurant on Saticoy St. nearby.
Then in 2006 a DNA profile from Duggan’s body, that had been uploaded to a law enforcement database, linked the case to the 1981 unsolved murder of Selena Keough, who was tied up, sexually assaulted, and strangled. Her body was dumped in Montclair.
The arrest in...