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A 70-year-old man in Reno, Nevada, is in police custody after California investigators said DNA evidence had implicated him in the 1982 murder case of a 5-year-old girl.
Robert John Lanoue was arrested Friday and is being held in Nevada’s Washoe County Detention Facility for the murder of Anne Pham on a more than $1 million bond as he awaits extradition in California, according to jail records. Pham went missing in Seaside, California, on Jan. 21, 1982, as she was walking home from elementary school.
“A new type of DNA testing not previously available to earlier investigators identified Lanoue as the suspect in Pham’s murder,” Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine M Pacioni said Friday when announcing his charges.
The case was reopened in 2020 by a Cold Case Task Force that worked with Seaside police.
At the time of the murder, Lanoue was 29 and lived in Seaside. Following the new DNA evidence, he has now been charged with one count of first-degree murder and special circumstance allegations of kidnapping and committing a lewd act on a child under 14.
“It’s a very strong case. DNA has a large part, genealogy has a large part and circumstantial evidence, in this case, is extremely powerful. The suspect lived about a block and a half away from Anne Pham,” said Interim Seaside Police Chief Nick Borges.
The new technology is capable of determining exact profiles even from highly degraded remains or rootless hair, Astrea Forensics says of the technology on its website.
“This is a great example of excellent police work by the Seaside Police Department in re-opening the Pham case and working collaboratively with Monterey County DA Cold Case Task Force, and ultimately bringing some level of closure to the Pham family,” said Seaside Mayor Ian Oglesby.
“The hearts of our Seaside community go out to them,” Oglesby added .
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