According to police, the arrest marked the culmination of decades of investigative work.
James Ray Gary, 76, of Fairfield was taken into custody last week.
In July 1980, police in Union City discovered the body of 46-year-old Latrelle Lindsay in her home on the 2400 block of Medallion Drive. The laboratory assistant in the biology department at Merritt College had blunt-force injuries and apparent bite marks on her arms. She had been sexually assaulted and asphyxiated. Union City police discovered the main switch on her home's electricity had been turned off and a screen on her bedroom window was ripped off.
Sixteen years later, Caltrans workers doing routine road maintenance on Interstate 780 near Spruce in Vallejo discovered a body tucked inside some bushes. It had been wrapped in plastic and was heavily decomposed. The body belonged to Winifred Douglas, 46, of Alameda County. She, too, had been asphyxiated and suffered blunt-force trauma to the head and neck.For decades, there was no suspect in either seemingly unconnected case.
In 2012, though, the sheriff's office learned they got a hit: DNA from a cold-case murder in Union City matched their suspect. For the first time, the murders of Lindsay and Douglas were linked.
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