The FBI named an Oregon State Penitentiary inmate this week as a person of interest in unsolved southern California killings that date back nearly 40 years.
The San Francisco Gate reports that new DNA tests linked Rodney Halbower, 66, to five murders that happened in 1976. The cases might have remained without a lead if Halbower hadn’t given a DNA sample when he was transferred from a Nevada state prison to Oregon last year.
Halbower was first sentenced in Nevada in 1976 on a rape conviction, but escaped to Oregon in 1986 where he committed a laundry list of other crimes, including attempted murder, assault and robbery.
After receiving parole in Nevada to serve time in Oregon, Halbower was sent to the state penitentiary in November 2013. The DNA sample taken from Halbower after the transfer is serving as key evidence in the nearly four-decade-old killings, which included signs of sexual assault.
So far, the newspaper reports, the FBI hasn’t said what will happen to Halbower aside from being named a person of interest. But the discovery means a woman who was convicted for one of the murders will be released for the first time since 1979.
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