Suspect arrested in 40-year-old California cold case murder with help of DNA testing

Police in Tucson, Arizona, have arrested a man accused of murdering a young man and sexually assaulting a young woman in their car in California in 1984.

Roger Neil Schmidt Sr., 23 at the time of the Dec. 14, 1984, incident, is accused of shooting Terrance Arndt, who was 18, and sexually assaulting a young woman, also 18, who was with Arndt, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office said in a release Wednesday.

Another suspect had been arrested in 1995 and jailed for two years, but was let go because his DNA did not match evidence found on the woman’s blouse, according to SFGATE. In 2024, the case was revisited by investigators who sent the DNA evidence to Othram Labs in Texas for genealogical testing…

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