CA Kathy Neff, 21, Elliot Ranch Road, Sacramento, 8 November 1980

East Area Rapist arrest has police scouring old files. Is a 13th murder charge to come?

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article211209699.html#storylink=cpy
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Like countless others who have lost friends to unsolved cold cases, Sigle was hoping the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo would solve the Oct. 16, 1980, disappearance of his onetime girlfriend, Kathy Emilia Neff.

Neff, 21, vanished after dropping her car off for service at a Mazda dealership on Florin Road; her body was found by pheasant hunters three weeks later at the end of a gravel road near the Valley Hi Country Club.

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No one was ever arrested in the slaying, and Neff’s case remains one of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department’s pending cold case homicides.

Despite DeAngelo’s arrest as an alleged serial rapist and killer, sheriff’s officials say the circumstances of the Neff killing lead them to believe it is not connected to the East Area Rapist crimes.

But the department and other law enforcement agencies across California are taking a fresh look at various cold cases and tips from the public to determine whether there is some previously unseen link to other unsolved crimes.

“Some of those (tips) may have valuable information that on its surface may not seem to be relevant, but there is always that possibility that it’s an extra clue,” sheriff’s Sgt. Shaun Hampton said.

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