By City News Service
Apr 6, 2021
LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A Bakersfield man was ordered today to stand trial in the slayings of two young women in the 1980s, including a Reseda resident whose body was found in the trunk of her car in a Burbank parking lot.
Following a three-day hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen found sufficient evidence to allow the case against Horace Van Vaultz, now 65, to proceed to trial on murder charges stemming from the June 9, 1986, asphyxiation of 22-year-old Mary Duggan, whose body was found in the trunk of her car in an empty parking lot in Burbank, and the July 16, 1981, strangulation of Selena Keough, a 20-year-old mother who was killed in San Bernardino County and dumped under bushes in Montclair.
The case marked the first criminal prosecution in Los Angeles County involving investigative genetic genealogy, in which detectives access commercial DNA databases, load DNA material from the crime and find a relative s match that can point toward a suspect and collect their DNA, then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said at the time. Mr. Vaultz maintains his innocence, his defense attorney, Damon Lamont Hobdy, told reporters shortly after his client whom he described as a retired widower was arrested and charged in November 2019. Surprisingly, Mr. Vaultz has taken this very well . he understands that this is going to be a fight.
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