SEATTLE — A Spokane man is behind bars accused of murdering a woman in California more than 40 years ago. Investigators cracked the case with a DNA match from a recently tested sexual assault kit in Washington state.
In September 1979, Patricia Carnahan was beaten, strangled, and left to die at a Lake Tahoe Campground according to the El Dorado District Attorney’s Office.
Carnahan’s body was recovered and investigators gathered evidence including DNA in a sexual assault kit. Carnahan was a Jane Doe up until 2015 when investigators reopened her case and family members identified her through photos of jewelry in a newspaper. Afterward, her identity was confirmed through family DNA.
It was more than 40 years until Carnahan’s suspected killer was identified. A separate rape kit from 1994 in Spokane was recently tested as part of the Washington Attorney General’s Office’s effort to clear a backlog of untested sexual assault kits.
The kit out of Spokane linked 63-year-old Harold Carpenter to both cases. As of Wednesday, Carpenter was in jail in Spokane awaiting extradition to El Dorado County.
“This rape kit has literally been sitting on a shelf since 1994 and because of our initiative, that kit was recently tested, put into this database and authorities in California matched it to the suspect for murder down in California,” said Bob Ferguson, Washington Attorney General.
El Dorado prosecutors said this is the oldest cold case in the country to be solved through a sexual assault DNA review run through CODIS.
“That DNA is now going into a database that law enforcement agencies in Washington state but around the country as well can seek matches for unsolved crimes and that's exactly what happened in this case,” Ferguson said.
The Washington Attorney General's Office has been working to clear a backlog of more than 10,000 untested sexual assault kits since 2017. Ferguson said the clearing of the backlog is likely to bring closure to more cases.
“Sometimes these cases go back many, many decades but that's why it's so important to get these kits tested," Ferguson said. "Get that DNA in the system so we can bring closure and bring justice as well."
DNA profiles from the tested kits are put into the FBI’s CODIS system. The Washington State Patrol (WSP) handles testing the kits and said since work to clear the backlog 3,128 were loaded into CODIS. Of that, 1,201 had hits, meaning DNA was already in CODIS and 225 tested kits lead to a conviction match.
The clearing of the rape kit backlog plus the AG’s forensic genetic genealogy program helped solve eight cold cases across the state in 2022.
Federal grants help pay for genealogy testing and sexual assault kit testing. The number of kits untested has gone from thousands to hundreds.
According to WSP, 573 are still awaiting testing. 2,801 kits have been tested and are now needing final WSP evaluation and 336 kits are still with outsourced labs.
“That's the challenge moving forward," Ferguson said. "Now that we've largely cleared the backlog is not to allow another backlog to get created. That would only happen if we take our eye off the ball if we don't put the resources into it."
Since May of 2022, any new kit that comes in must be tested in 45 days. WSP said that has happened 98.5% of the time. WSP expects the backlog to be completely cleared by the end of the year.