Lisa Gondek; Rachel Zendejas.
A former karate instructor has been charged in connection with the rapes and murders of two women in California.
Tony Garcia, 68, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances Thursday in the 1981 deaths of 20-year-old Rachel Zendejas and 21-year-old Lisa Gondek.
“The fact is, this suspect has been hiding in plain sight for over 40 years,” Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said at a press conference Thursday.
Both women were strangled to death and sexually assaulted.
The suspect was identified through the investigative tool of genetic genealogy.
Two newspaper boys, ages 9 and 14, found the body of Zendejas, an Oxnard Community College student and single mom of two daughters, inside a car port across the street from her Camarillo home around 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 18, 1981.
Tony Garcia.Ventura County Sheriff
The case went cold and in 2002 the Ventura County sheriff’s lab obtained forensic evidence from the Zendejas crime scene, but no match to a suspect in CODIS, the databank of felons.
In 2004, the sheriff’s office learned that the previously unknown suspect in the murder of Zendejas was linked through DNA evidence to the Dec. 12, 1981, killing of Gondek, a retail employee who lived in Oxnard.
Gondek was out for the evening with friends at a local disco before her body was found in the bathtub of her apartment.
Fryhoff said Garcia was linked to the murders after the cold case investigators began using genetic genealogy in 2019.
Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up forPEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletterfor breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.
Garcia was in the Navy and worked as a karate instructor at the time of the slayings.
“This is an ongoing investigation,” said Fryhoff. “We are going to be looking for any additional witnesses, victims or anyone who knows anything else that might lead to additional charges against Mr. Garcia.”
Garcia’s next court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 23.
It’s unclear if he has entered a plea or retained an attorney.
source: people.com
