The cross-jurisdictional connection was eventually made through the DNA work of the early 2000s, when a comparison between the Sacramento rape kit evidence and the Southern California murder scene evidence showed a match. That match was the result of someone — investigators working in the relevant agencies — deciding to run the comparison. It was not automatic or inevitable.
Paul Holes has described coming across the East Area Rapist case files in 1994 when he joined the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office as a forensic investigator. He was not the lead investigator on the case; Contra Costa County had only one case in the EAR file. But the case became something he returned to repeatedly over his career, partly because of the specific challenge it presented: substantial evidence, including preserved DNA, and no match.
Holes’s engagement with the case over more than two decades reflected a specific kind of investigative commitment that cold cases require. Active cases get daily attention. Cold cases require someone to maintain engagement over years or decades while other cases, with their urgent daily demands, consume the normal allocation of investigative resources.
The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Cold Case Science and Technology Unit, established later, became an important institutional home for the preserved evidence and the investigative coordination. The unit represented an institutional commitment to cold cases that might otherwise persist without dedicated resources.
The Ventura County District Attorney’s Office played a specific role because the rape kit from one Ventura County case provided biological material that was used in the genealogical investigation. Evidence preserved by that office became the DNA profile that was uploaded to GEDmatch.