It is one of the most criticized murder investigations in Santa Rosa. Genetic genealogy tracing could help solve it

The Santa Rosa Police Department pinpointed a suspect in a 1991 closed case using a rare DNA matching technique first popularized in 2018 after it was used to identify the Golden State Killer.

The mystery of who killed Sarah Hutchings, a 35-year-old Korbel Winery hostess who was found dead in the tub of her apartment in Santa Rosa on August 17, 1991, remains unsolved. And, investigators have little information about their suspect, who died in 2001, or his potential connection to Hutchings.

Still, they are hoping that a rupture in the cold 30-year-old case could be contained in a semen sample recovered from Hutchings’ body during his autopsy. The department sent the sample to a private lab for genetic genealogy tracing in late 2018, according to the Santa Rosa police sergeant. Ryan Cogbill, who first handled the closed case in 2017 while working as a detective in the department’s Violent Crime Unit.

The use of family DNA tracing, in which law enforcement attempts to match DNA left at a crime scene with DNA samples voluntarily submitted to a commercial genealogy website, such as GEDmatch, was a first for the police department, Santa Rosa Police spokesperson Sgt. Chris Mahurin said.

Authorities hope the technique will lead them to relatives whose DNA samples match the one sent to the company for testing. The process is part of their hunt for the Hutchings killer.

Since the process was used to identify the Golden State Killer, family DNA tracing has been used by law enforcement agencies across the country to resolve their own cold cases. Investigators typically turned to this process after the federal law enforcement DNA database failed to locate a match.

The technique has its detractors – primarily privacy advocates, who argue that the practice is largely unregulated and an imperfect science.

In October, Maryland and Montana became the first states in the country to restrict how law enforcement uses genetic genealogy, although no such restrictions exist in California.

In the Hutchings case, the technique led Cogbill to a man named James Steven Jobe. Jobe, 43, had been separated from his family for several years when he died of an overdose in Clark County, Wash., Cogbill said.

A sample of Jobe’s blood, kept by the coroner’s office after his death, was compared to semen recovered from Hutchings’ body and the two virtually matched, Cogbill said.

Jobe had previously had contact with local agents in two domestic violence cases, but had never been interviewed or even mentioned in the Hutchings case, Cogbill said.

Two trafficking cases, one from 1990 and the other from 1991, also put him in this area, according to the Sonoma County Superior Court’s online records.

Other than that, Cogbill said, the police don’t know much else about Jobe.

“We don’t cross the line to say that James Jobe killed Sarah Hutchings,” Cogbill said. “We are saying that James Jobe is a suspect in the Sarah Hutchings murder and we want to know more about him.”

It’s unclear whether genetic genealogy tracing will bring the department closer to solving the Cold Case, an investigation that has come under intense scrutiny in the years since Hutchings’ death, leading to rumors of police cover-up.

A coroner’s investigator initially ruled that Hutchings’ death was the result of natural causes, despite hints of potential wrongdoing found at the home.

Hutchings’ family were allowed into her apartment after her body was removed, although an autopsy later revealed she was likely strangled and close to death when placed in the tub and drowned.

Detectives were also accused of focusing on a single man Hutchings had briefly dated, Mark Marsh, while ignoring other suspects, including police officers Hutchings had known.

Marsh met Hutchings while briefly separated from his wife, two months before his death, through a personal Democratic press announcement. He was arrested in his murder in 1993 after a criminal grand jury ruled that Marsh should be charged.

Defense attorneys for Marsh have argued that police withheld information from the grand jury that kept Marsh away, particularly that Hutchings saw other men at the time she was killed.

After a judge determined that the Marsh case was again flawed, the indictment was dismissed.

Marsh, in 1994, sued the city of Santa Rosa and its police department for malicious prosecutions. In the end, he gave up his legal fight when he ran out of money to pay the ongoing legal costs.

“I think the whole charge was very devastating for him and his family,” said attorney Steve Gallenson, Marsh’s defense attorney at the time.

The case was then turned over to a senior police department homicide investigator and he learned that the interviews with the witnesses had not been recorded and that there were no notes for the others.

As the investigation dragged on, Hutchings ‘family awaited information that would lead to the location of his killer and a motive, said Diane Parker, Hutchings’ sister, now 69.

Joyce Whalen, Hutchings’ mother, clung to the belief that her daughter’s case would be resolved, Parker said.

Whalen persisted in pressuring the Santa Rosa Police Department to resolve the case and kept articles about the investigation in a scrapbook, which Parker inherited when his mother died in 2007, she added. .

“She never gave up hope,” Parker said of her mother. “I guess I did. I resigned myself that since they didn’t have the evidence, it wouldn’t happen.

Then, in late December, Parker got a call from Cogbill, who told him he wanted to talk to him about his sister’s death.

On New Years Eve, Cogbill visited Parker’s home in Ukiah and shared what he learned after contracting with Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based DNA technology company, to perform the genetic genealogical tracing.

“He said that this James Jobe – they tracked him down to him,” Parker said. “It was quite spectacular, something you would see on TV.”

While Cogbill has said he is certain he has found a prime suspect in the case, unanswered questions about Jobe’s potential connection to Hutchings and what led to his death mean he is unable to resolve the case, he said.

Now Cogbill is asking the public for help in learning more about Jobe in an effort to find out more about who he was.

“It gives us a face and a suspect, but as to what happened in that apartment that night, it’s unknown,” Cogbill said.

The Press Democrat tried to find those close to Jobe for comment, but to no avail. Anyone with information about Jobe can reach Cogbill at 707-543-4013.

You can contact Editor-in-Chief Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or [email protected]. On Twitter @nashellytweets.