DNA rules out Golden State Killer suspect Joseph DeAngelo in 1978 double-murder

Megan Diskin | Ventura

Show Caption Hide Caption Man 'factually innocent' of Simi Valley killings The Ventura County District Attorney's Office and the Simi Valley Police Department are recommending the immediate release of Craig Richard Coley.

DNA has ruled out the alleged Golden State Killer as a suspect in a 1978 Simi Valley double-homicide case that saw an innocent man imprisoned for nearly four decades.

Simi Valley Police Chief David Livingstone said the results came in Monday and mean the investigation into the strangling of Rhonda Wicht, 24, and suffocation of her 4-year-old son Donald Wicht remains ongoing.

“With all cases where there’s DNA, if there’s no match we move on, and in this case there was no match and he’s been eliminated, and that’s that,” Livingstone said.

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Craig Coley, 71, had been serving a life sentence in the murders since 1980 but his longtime professed innocence and the doubts about the case raised by retired Simi Valley police Detective Mike Bender made Livingstone and his team take another look.

The Wicht murder case was reopened in October 2016 and leftover DNA samples from the 1978 crime scene on Buyers Street were found at a lab in the Northern California city of Hayward. Scientists there built a male DNA profile and it wasn’t Coley’s. The Simi Valley veteran was pardoned and released from prison just before Thanksgiving last year.

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In April, Joseph DeAngelo was arrested in connection with a series of murders across the state in the 1970s and 1980s committed by a person dubbed the Golden State Killer. The slayings included the bludgeoning deaths of Charlene and Lyman Smith at their Ventura home in 1980.

DeAngelo’s arrest signaled closure for many of the Golden State Killer’s victims but for investigators, it signaled a new DNA profile to check against cold cases.

And when Coley was freed, investigators in Simi Valley took another look at the serial killer’s modus operandi in relation to the Wicht murders.

Monday’s update on that possible connection came from the same lab in Hayward, more than a month after Livingstone had DeAngelo’s DNA sent there.

At Livingstone’s request, the multi-agency task force working to solve the crimes linked to the Golden State Killer, also known as the East Area Rapist and Visalia Ransacker, provided DeAngelo’s DNA to the Hayward lab.

The task force also confirmed that the DNA profile pulled from the Wicht crime scene wasn’t a match to DeAngelo.

The theory was always that Rhonda Wicht knew her killer, Livingstone previously told The Star. But the timing of the murders, Rhonda Wicht’s ransacked home and evidence of an attempted rape pointed to a different theory.

In the end, the theory still could be true.

“We’re not giving up,” Livingstone said.

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