On the morning of May 23, 1994, two best friends, Lawrence “Larry” Loehr and Eugene Cates, were brutally killed at a north Stockton construction site. Both were 23 years old, engaged to the women they planned to marry and on the verge of careers in law enforcement. For 32 years, no one was held accountable. Now, authorities say they have solved the case: Donald Lee Clark, 80, a lifelong Stockton resident, has been arrested and charged with murder.
Loehr was working an overnight security shift at the Spanos Park construction site on Thornton Road. On that early Monday morning, Cates stopped by after finishing his shift at a nearby Chevron station on Benjamin Holt Drive. At around 3 a.m., police received a report of an assault at the site. When Stockton police officers arrived, they found both men dead.
Loehr had been bound, gagged and shot once in the back of the head inside a security trailer. Cates was found near a chain-link fence surrounding the site, his body beneath a section of fencing that had seemingly been knocked down by a car, police said. That car was Cates’ own vehicle, which the killer used to smash through the fence and flee. It was found abandoned and burned about 3 miles away two hours later. Police were initially uncertain whether Cates had been shot or run over. Nothing appeared to have been taken from the site, and robbery was ruled out as a motive…