A cold case is unraveled
Crime: Marcia Lynn Christian, 19, was found dead in Castaic 34 years ago

by Marianne Love

The Signal (of Santa Clarita County)

March 18, 2010

It took 34 years, but the identity of the man responsible for the brutal death of 19-year-old Marcia Lynn Christian of Newhall has been uncovered and the case has been closed.

Authorities fingered the late Mark David Jackson, formally of Yreka, as the killer after a comparison match of DNA evidence submitted against the CAL-DNA Data Bank, said Capt. Paul Becker of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff's Station.

Solving the cold case was made possible in part with federal grant money used to hire retired detectives who comb over fingerprints, viable witnesses and DNA evidence tied to thousands of victims. The identification of Jackson marks the oldest Sheriff's Homicide Bureau case to be solved using DNA evidence.

Christian's body was found partially buried in the hills of the Castaic area on July 22, 1976, after her husband reported her missing when she failed to return from a job interview in the San Fernando Valley.

“Christian was sexually assaulted in her own car,” said Becker, who worked on cold cases before taking the helm in Santa Clarita this week. “Hikers in Castaic spotted her buried with her hand exposed.”

Detectives found a blanket in her car nearby, and noted that her spark plugs had been removed. But the trail went cold.

Old cases, new tricks

That is, until 2009.

Becker secured $350,000 in federal grant money and hired a dozen retired homicide detectives to use the latest high-tech tools on the old cases, including Christian's.

Among those detectives was Detective Stuart Reed, the original investigator in Christian's slaying.

“Detective Stuart Reed remembered he held a blanket in her car. It remained in sheriff's evidence locker in Central Property,” Becker said. “We took it to crime lab (in January) and were able to match the DNA.”

Reed and the other detectives work part-time, looking through the old files for clues.

The sheriff's homicide department handles the vast majority of homicides in Los Angeles County. The unsolved murder unit is one of many under its umbrella.

Cold cases go through a process to find those with a high degree of solvability. They are then divided into low, medium and high degrees of solvability.

Those designated medium or high take priority over those considered low, such as in the case of Betty Brazil, a 21-year-old Santa Clarita woman killed Sept. 2, 1966, in the parking lot of Bob's Big Boy in Lakewood, Becker said.

Matching DNA with crime-scene evidence was nonexistent at the time of Christian's death.

“DNA in the early '90s was a rudimentary system,” Becker said. “The chances were that Jackson was in the database then, but later he was mandated by law to be in the database.”

Registered sex offenders and state prisoners are swabbed to collect their DNA, Becker said.

The awful truth

Jackson, the man who killed Christian, had an extensive criminal history of sexual offenses dating from childhood — multiple kidnappings, rapes and child molestation charges, as well as firearms violations, authorities said. He was also diagnosed as a mentally disordered sex offender.

Jackson died on Aug. 15, 1997, at the age of 47, of a narcotics overdose in Klamath Falls, Ore. He appeared in an Yreka court four days before his death on charges of willful child cruelty and being under the influence of a controlled substance.

Christian's husband has since remarried, started a new family and moved from the Santa Clarita Valley, said sheriff's Sgt. Darren Harris of the Santa Clarita Valley Station.

“Although he was very happy the case was solved,” Harris wrote in an e-mail, “he does not wish to be contacted or interviewed.”

http://www.the-signal.com/news/article/26169/