Decades later, cops make arrest in case of CA girl abducted walking to kindergarten
Forty years ago, 5-year-old Anne Pham of Seaside, California was walking to her Highland Elementary School kindergarten class when she disappeared.
She was never seen alive again after that day, January 23, 1982, according to the Monterey County District Attorney. Her body was found two days later at the former Fort Ord Army base.
The crime went unsolved for decades.
However, new DNA testing led investigators to a Nevada man, Robert John Lanoue, 70, officials said. He was taken into custody Wednesday, July 6, and is charged with one count of first-degree murder, with special circumstance allegations that he murdered Pham while committing kidnapping and a lewd act on a child under the age of 14.
“The guy is a complete monster,” Seaside Police Chief Nicholas Borges told PEOPLE. “He’s every person’s nightmare. The world is a safer place with this guy off the streets.”
Lanoue was 29 at the time of Anne’s murder and lived in Seaside, officials said. He was a registered sex offender in Nevada and “spent an ‘extensive period of time’ in jail,” according to Monterey County Weekly.
Technological advances aided investigators solve the case, officials said. In 2020, the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Task Force worked with the Seaside Police Department to reopen Anne’s case, officials said. They wanted to submit items of evidence for DNA testing.
In January, the task force received a grant that allowed it to “to seek justice in Pham’s case,” the district attorney said.
“A new type of DNA testing not previously available to earlier investigators identified Lanoue as the suspect in Pham’s murder,” the district attorney’s office said.
Borges said Anne’s case was one of the department’s “biggest and most complex cold cases,” according to Monterey County Weekly.
“This is the greatest day of my professional career,” Borges told Monterey County Weekly.
Seaside is 6.4 miles northeast of Monterey.
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