DNA technology brings closure to 5 CA cold cases, including 1976 murder of Karen Percifield

APTOS, Calif. (KGO) -- After nearly 50 years unsolved, a murderer has been identified in a Aptos cold case through DNA evidence.

DNA technology continues to crack decades-old crime mysteries.

In the last 30 days, the company Othram has solved five California cases; three of them are from the Bay Area.

Director of case management, Michael Vogen explains their technology can go a step further than what public crime labs are armed with.

"Cases don't have to go cold anymore. Cold cases are a thing of the past," Vogen said.

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They compare DNA to databases to find relatives, crafting a much bigger family tree than other DNA labs can.

"With traditional DNA testing, they look at 20-24 marks of testing of DNA. Which is really good of telling if it's you, or a parent, child, or sibling - so like a first-degree relationship. Outside of that, that's like codis testing, they can't really tell who is there, so when that happens they send us the DNA, and instead of looking at the 24 markers we look at hundreds of thousands of markers and with the additional data points we can detect a 6th cousin. And so all of a sudden there's a new road map, new investigative leads that are delivered," Vogen said.

The most recent case solved - Karen Percifield.

Her sister Annie Goheen told me over the phone her nickname was 'Cookie.'

"She was as sweet as she was beautiful," Goheen said.

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In 1976 while visiting her sister in Aptos, she went out for a walk and never returned. Authorities say she was stabbed to death.

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's office said Richard Sommerhalder was a suspect, but there wasn't enough evidence to charge him.

Four months after Percifield's death, Sommerhalder was arrested for murdering two other women in Santa Cruz County. He only served 8.5 years in prison before being paroled and moving out of state.

"The way the whole system went was very sad, and at that time the rules were not that strong, the California rules of punishment were very lenient for the fact that two women he was convicted of, he could get out of parole in 8.5 years? C'mon," Goheen said.

Sommerhalder passed away in 1994. But through the forensic evidence the sheriff's office submitted to Othram, they were able to identify him as Percifield's killer.

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ABC7 News spoke with her daughter Meadow Shumake who lives in Washington. She was 6 years-old when her mother was killed.

"Yeah, it's been a lifelong you know, obsession of mine to want to know what happened, why and all that and who," Shumake said.

ABC7 News reporter Lauren Martinez asked how it felt to have closure.

"Like I said, your mind wanders to far out places when you don't know the truth. So it's like a bittersweet justice. I'm really happy that there must be other people you know, that are going to feel the same way as me," Shumake said.

"No matter what and this is a hard pill to swallow. No matter what you have to forgive, because if you don't, you'll carry that hate and that resentment. And I felt that for so long because I was angry and mad," Goheen said.

Othram is shifting from not only doing cold cases from decades ago, but now getting into modern case work.