Found Deceased CA - Mary Duggan, 22, June 9, 1986, Burbank & Selena Keough, 20, July 16, 1981, Montclair *Arrest*

[Legally Bland]

I think new thread should be open due to newest police appeal. I am not sure though if under serial killer forum or unidentified - women in the photos.

Police appeal to public to identify women in the photos found at Horace's house upon his arrest last year. They would like to identify them prior to his upcoming murder trial.
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Mystery Photos Found at Accused Serial Killer’s Home

(click on image to enlarge)

Police in Burbank said the women seen in a cache of photographs discovered during a search of an accused serial killer’s home could be important clues in the man’s upcoming murder trial.

“I don’t know who they are,” said Burbank Police Department Det. Aaron Kay. “My concern is that either they’re missing or dead. They could be the victim of something.”
The photographs were found last fall when Horace Van Vaultz was arrested.
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Court records show Vaultz had been arrested for a number of sexual assaults, including an incident in 1984 in which he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor after a 22-year-old woman accused him of choking and sexually assaulting her.
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In 1988 Vaultz was acquitted in Ventura County Superior Court for the sexual assault and murder of a woman named Janna Rowe on Christmas 1986. She was last seen at a motel in Thousand Oaks, and her body was found at a trash dump site in Ventura several days later.
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Now the photographs have presented a new mystery. Kay says the women shown have a similar appearance: young, Caucasian, light brown or blonde hair. Vaultz was a peripheral figure in the early days of LA’s hip hop music scene, and Kay says there are indications Vaultz’s access to large dance events and parties put him in contact with hundreds, if not thousands, of young women.
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“I want to make sure that people see his picture, that they understand what he was doing back then, to see if we can get some resolution to some other families,” Kay said. There are numerous young women who vanished from Los Angeles during the same time period and were never found. There are other cases in which bodies have been found but it’s been impossible to collect DNA for comparison, he said.
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The Burbank Police Department has set up a hotline for anyone with information about the women in the photographs or Horace Van Vaultz. The number is (818) 238-3288.

(Police photos of Horace Van Vaultz)

Mystery Photos Found at Accused Serial Killer’s Home

I've started a thread in the unidentified forum, I'm sure I've seen similar threads in there. Hope you don't mind.

Added some numbers to the pic for ease too.

 

[Legally Bland]

Are the two women (Duggan and Keough) in these photos?

I agree with Al Ka, I don't think Mary and Selena would be in there, but I do see similarities so I know where you're coming from. I'm really bad with faces though.

 

[Legally Bland]

This pic was supposed to go in the above post, can't seem to add it.

 

[Al Ka]

I've started a thread in the unidentified forum, I'm sure I've seen similar threads in there. Hope you don't mind.

Added some numbers to the pic for ease too.

View attachment 237192

Thank You for making thread for the photos and also adding the numbers on them. It would take me 100 years to do that.

Adding link here to that thread so other's can find it too -

CA - Unidentified females in photos belonging to accused SK Horace Van Vaultz Jr.

 

[Legally Bland]

Thank You for making thread for the photos and also adding the numbers on them. It would take me 100 years to do that.

Adding link here to that thread so other's can find it too -

CA - Unidentified females in photos belonging to accused SK Horace Van Vaultz Jr.

Thanks for that. I was positive I'd added a link to the uid thread, I must have typed it out and not pressed post.

 

[JerseyGirl]

Man to stand trial in Reseda and San Bernardino County cold case killings – Daily News

 

[faithx]

According to the Los Angeles Superior Court website (case BA482647), the jury trial for Horace Van Vaultz Jr. will begin on July 19, 2022 at 8:30 AM. It will take place at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center.

 

[faithx]

Closing Arguments Begin in Accused LA Serial Killer Horace Van Vaultz, Jr. Trial

Jurors in Downtown L.A. began to hear closing arguments Friday in the trial of a man accused by prosecutors of being a serial killer, who was arrested after genealogical database searches allegedly linked him to the murders of two young women in the 1980s. “He’s a man who brutalizes and...

www.nbclosangeles.com

Defense Argues Man Linked by DNA to Montclair, Burbank Cold Case Murders Isn't a Killer

The defense attorney for a man linked by DNA evidence to the deaths of two women in Montclair and Burbank in the 1980s told jurors in closing argument Wednesday that prosecutors failed to prove his client raped and strangled the women.

www.nbclosangeles.com

 

[TootsieFootsie]

Genealogy search helps convict California man in 1980s rape, murder cases

The cases went cold for decades until they were linked to Horace Van Vaultz Jr., 67, through investigative genetic genealogy, which uses genealogical websites to identify potential relatives of a suspect based on DNA collected at a crime scene.

www.nbcnews.com

LOS ANGELES — A California man prosecutors called a serial killer was convicted Thursday of raping and killing two women in the 1980s after investigators linked him to DNA evidence, prosecutors said.

Horace Van Vaultz Jr., 67, was found guilty of first-degree murder with the special circumstance allegations that the crimes involved multiple murders, rape and sodomy, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said in a statement.

Vaultz was convicted of killing 22-year-old Mary Duggan in 1986. Her body was found in the trunk of her car in a parking lot in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank. He also was convicted of the 1981 killing of 20-year-old Selena Keough, whose body was found under bushes near an apartment building in Montclair, in San Bernardino County. Both were strangled.

 

[dotr]

Sept 27 2022 rbbm

Jury Sentences Serial Killer-Rapist in Cold Case - Burbank Leader

First published in the Sept. 24 print issue of the Burbank Leader. By City News Service A man described by a prosecutor as a sexually motivated serial killer was sentenced on Monday to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole for murdering two women in the 1980s, including...

burbankleader.outlooknewspapers.com

''A man described by a prosecutor as a sexually motivated serial killer was sentenced on Monday to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole for murdering two women in the 1980s, including one in Burbank.
Jurors deliberated about three hours before convicting Horace Van Vaultz Jr., now 67, of two counts of first-degree murder for the July 16, 1981, strangulation of Selena Keough — a 21-year-old mother who was killed in San Bernardino County and dumped under bushes in Montclair — and the June 9, 1986, asphyxiation of Mary Duggan, a 22-year-old Reseda resident whose body was found in the trunk of her car in an empty parking lot in Burbank.
The nine-man, three-woman panel also found true the special-circumstance allegations of multiple murders, murder during a rape involving both women and murder during sodomy involving Keough.
Vaultz, who was convicted last month of both murders, testified in his own defense and denied any involvement in the killings.
The case marked the first criminal prosecution in Los Angeles County involving investigative genetic genealogy, in which detectives access commercial DNA databases, load DNA material from the crime and find a relative’s match that can point toward a suspect and collect their DNA, then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said at the time.
“When you get past the shock of hearing your daughter is dead, you wonder who is out there that did this,” Duggan’s mother, Maureen, said in a statement read in court by Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman at the sentencing.
“Then you just miss her so much, every day, at every family gathering and holiday … You don’t think of who after so many years. It’s one thing that your child dies at only 22 years old. It’s a whole other thing to know she suffered in dying at the hands of a monster.”
Keough’s sister, Sabrina Plourde, said it was difficult to sit through Vaultz’s trial.
“I didn’t know how bad it was until I came to court,” she said of hearing the graphic details of what happened to her sister.
She urged the judge to impose the “strongest punishment” available on Vaultz.
Also in court were the parents and brother of Janna Rowe, a 25-year-old woman whose murder Vaultz had been acquitted of decades ago in Ventura County.
The prosecutor noted during Vaultz’s trial that DNA evidence — which now links the defendant to DNA from semen found in Rowe’s body — was not available for testing when Vaultz was acquitted of Rowe’s 1986 killing in Ventura County, noting that he cannot be retried for that crime but the jury could use it as “pattern evidence.”