A California man has been found guilty of strangling and beating a teenage girl to death more than four decades ago.
Marvin Ray Markle, 59, was convicted of first-degree murder this week for killing De Anna Lynn Johnson, 14, in her hometown of Vacaville, California.
Johnson’s battered body was found on railroad tracks the day after her mother, Ginger Dimpel, reported her missing when she never returned home from a neighborhood party on November 15, 1982.
Police named Markle, who was then 17 and at the same party as Johnson that night, as a suspect in the initial investigation, The Sacramento Bee reported. But despite investigators’ best efforts, the case went cold for decades.
Markle popped back up on investigators’ radars in 2004, when they discovered he was a suspect in another homicide in Butte County – the 2001 murder of Shirley Ann Pratt, 41.
The killer was not arrested for Pratt’s death until 2013. That case went to trial in 2014 and Markle was then convicted and sentenced to 80 years in prison for Pratt’s death.
As Markle was on trial for Pratt’s Butte County murder, detectives were still looking into Johnson’s death.
Those investigators went to the trial hearings regarding Pratt’s death to gather evidence that helped ‘advance’ their investigation into Johnson’s death, police said.
De Anna Lynn Johnson, 14, was murdered on November 15, 1982 on her way home from a party
Johnson’s body was discovered badly beaten and strangled on railroad tracks close to her Vacaville home
More than four decades after the murder, Marvin Ray Markle was convicted of Johnson’s death. He has already been serving an 80-year sentence for another homicide
By January 24, 2017, police had built a strong enough case against Markle – who was already incarcerated at Kern Valley State Prison for killing Pratt – to formally accuse him of murdering Johnson. He pleaded not guilty to the crime.
Johnson’s mother Dimpel said at a 2017 press conference: ‘Today is a day De Anna’s family never thought would come.
‘We miss her very much, and we rely on happy memories and live on knowing that De Anna believed in God because of rainbows, but we believe in God because of De Anna.’
‘The justice process is just beginning, the journey for truth has been their all along,’ Vacaville Police Chief John Carli said at the same 2017 conference.
Johnson’s murder case went to trial this month and after three weeks, the jury came to their verdict.
The Solano County District Attorney’s Office (SCDAO) said: ‘From that moment of finding De Anna Lynn Johnson’s lifeless body on the railroad tracks and all the years since, Vacaville Police Department never once gave up.’
Two detective’s from the investigation testified in court, including Joe Munoz, who claims the reason it took so long to convict Markle was lack of forensic technology at the time of the murder.
‘What I had was DNA… We had that, but we didn’t know what DNA was during that time,’ Munoz told CBS News Sacramento.
‘I got this weight off my shoulders now, the guy’s convicted of two murders.’
Markle, who was also know as ‘Ziggy’, was arrested in 2013 for murdering Butte County woman Shirley Ann Pratt
Johnson’s childhood best friend Mary Borchers said it was widely known among her peers that Markle, who she knew as ‘Ziggy’, had been responsible for killing her dear friend.
She told CBS: ‘Everybody knew in our minds, it’s always been Ziggy, Ziggy, Ziggy, Ziggy. But no one ever came straight out and made it factual.’
District Attorney Abrams Krishna Abrams said in a Thursday statement: ‘I am so thankful for the dedication of the Vacaville Police Department and members of our office that no matter how much time went by they remained steadfast in their commitment to De Anna Lynn Johnson to solve her horrific case.
‘Although justice for De Anna Lynn Johnson and her family has been significantly delayed, and there have been evidentiary obstacles and legal challenges in court, we remained committed to solving De Anna Lynn’s case and are extremely grateful the jury was able to bring justice today.’
