48 Hours - #LindasStory

Episode Date: October 17, 2021

The “voice” of 11-year-old Linda O’Keefe goes viral in the search for her killer. "48 Hours" contributor Tracy Smith reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Hi, I'm Linda O'Keefe, or Linda Ann O'Keefe if I'm in trouble with my mom. 45 years ago today, I disappeared from Newport Beach. I was murdered, and my body was found in the back bay.

Today, I'm going to tell you my story. July 6, 1973, two days after the 4th of July, Linda was attending summer school. Young girl, 11-year-old, growing up in Corona del Mar. Usually, I ride my bike to school. The ride home is easy because it's almost all downhill. But today I got a ride so no bike. It was a Friday. Everyone was excited. It was a weekend and that you were going to hang out with your friends. At the end of her school day she called her mother from the office and asked her mother to come pick her up. And my mom said, I'm really busy. You can just walk home. And Linda says, oh but I'm tired, can you please come get me?

And she said, Linda, just walk home. You'll be fine. I'm still upset about not getting a ride home. I sit on the curb in front of the school with my feet sticking out in the street. I'll leave soon. Of course, she didn't come home, and that was around 1 o'clock. Her mother believed that Linda had possibly gone to a friend's house and for a few hours wasn't too concerned.

It was starting to get dark, so my dad and I got in the cars and we drove around. And then they decided to call the police because she should have been home by now. No one had seen Linda. Our officers, community members, searched for Linda throughout the night and into the next day. A lady in the bluffs above Back Bay hears a female voice outside screaming, Stop. You're hurting me. She doesn't know that I'm missing, that I'll be dead by morning, that I'll be found a couple hundred yards from her home.

It's pretty remote. You know, you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere. So in some ways, was this a perfect place to dump a body? Yeah, couldn't be better. It was almost unreal that that 11-year-old, a girl my age, could be killed. Linda was last seen talking to a stranger in a van near the intersection of Marguerite Drive and Inlet Drive

in Corona-O-Mar. They observed what they described as like a turquoise-blue van. We got on our bikes and rode around looking for the van. And if we could find the van, we were going to find the murderer. After years of working the case, the detectives eventually ran out of leads and the case went cold. In our detective bureau, we have a wall. We've got photos of our cold case victims.

You know, Linda obviously drew our attention. We needed to put Linda's face out there. I went to the public information officer for the police department. You know, Linda obviously drew our attention. We needed to put Linda's face out there. I went to the public information officer for the police department. Right away, she said, what about Twitter? It was so important for me to give a little girl whose life was cut short at 11 years old the opportunity to speak again. Now, 45 years later, I have a voice again. And I have something important to say.

We knew we were going to find this guy. Linda is going to help us find this man who did this to her. Thank you. Orchid Avenue. That's the street I grew up on. It's a small house, and we lived here most of my life. At 8 a.m., I walk out my front door and have no idea that it will be the last time. On July 6, 2018, exactly 45 years after Linda O'Keefe disappeared, the Newport Beach Police Department launched their unusual campaign for new leads on the cold case on Twitter. When a victim speaks, we want to listen.

The last day of Linda's life and its tragic end unfolded in a series of tweets. It was written from the 11-year-old murder victim's point of view and gave her a voice that resonated around the world. When we ran the numbers, we had 7 million impressions. That's 7 million people who saw, liked, and retweeted hashtag Linda's story, according to former Newport Beach PD spokesperson Jennifer Manzella. We were all over South America, in Europe, Australia, France. There wasn't a corner of the world that wasn't talking about it. I was like, wow, this is going to be huge.

For Linda's classmates, Jeff Thurner, Brian Weaver, Lisa Christopher, David Wiedemeyer, and Terry Briscoe Corwin. Yeah, we never forgot her. Hashtag Linda's story brought buried emotions back up to the surface. I go to Lincoln Intermediate School. A lot has changed between the last time I was here and what it looks like in 2018. What was it like reading that Twitter story and essentially hearing Linda's voice? Was it like reading that Twitter story and essentially hearing Linda's voice? I thought that was the most incredible, gut-wrenching thing I have ever read.

Chilling. Just chilling. As we were reading it, you kind of didn't want that girl to get in the van, you know, thinking, ugh! Linda should have been able to get home. It's a sad irony for the friends who know all too well how the story ended. In 1973, they were all carefree 11-year-olds growing up in the sleepy beach town of Corona Del Mar. What was Corona Del Mar like back then? Shangri-La. It was Shangri-La. Like perfect utopia. I mean, you would hop on your bike, and you would let the freedom and just the day unfold, and it was magic. In those magical memories of their youth, Linda remains frozen in time. She was really shy.

Quiet to herself, but sweet, very kind. I would just pass her through the hallway. She was a cute girl, you know, and it was like, you know, just beaming red as soon as I, you know, she'd smile or whatever else. She was just a very gentle, lovely soul. Linda's older sister, Cindy Borgeson, spoke with us via Zoom. She loved Billie Holiday. I mean, she loved old blues music. And I had a Blood, Sweat, and Tears album in high school. And God Bless the Child was one of her favorite songs. And sometimes we find her, and she'd just be in bed reading. You know, she loved stories. We both really loved Nancy Drew. Linda was the middle child and shared a special bond with her dad, Richard, a machinist.

He would go out and work on projects, and she would go out and help him. They had a real bond. They loved to hang out together. Their mom, Barbara, was an artist and working seamstress. Your mom sewed all of your clothes, you and your sisters? Most of them. She was a really gifted seamstress. Some of Cindy's happiest memories are of family trips to the great outdoors, where Linda, a Girl Scout and nature lover,

fit right in. And our family would vacation in the Redwoods, and we'd be camped by a creek, and she would just crouch down, and these little newts and little snakes would just come right to her. Do you think Linda saw the beauty in the world? Absolutely. And she always seemed to see the good in people.

That made her murder all the more horrific and shattered the idyllic life they knew. How do you make sense of it as an 11-year-old? You can't even grasp death. You just knew she wasn't going to be there anymore. What Lisa couldn't have known then was that this unfathomable tragedy would unfold moments after she saw Linda at summer school. Linda was on the phone with her mom in the school office begging for a ride home. She was upset, crying, just very, very sad. And then she left the office, and I walked out behind her. I went the opposite direction. Cindy had overheard her mom's end of the call

telling Linda she was too busy with work to pick her up from school. Cindy and her mom would play the if-onlys over and over in their minds. I felt terrible for not insisting that I go get her. None of this would have happened. At around 1.15 p.m. on that July 6, 1973, less than an hour after Linda had called home asking for a ride, a mother and daughter spotted her near this intersection about a mile from her house.

She was talking to a man who'd pulled up next to her in a van. It was the last time anyone saw Linda alive. Late tonight, the police will talk to a young woman named Janine. She and her mom are driving up Marguerite right now, and they see something they won't forget for a long time. It's me. And a turquoise van. If you close your eyes, you can remember it like it was yesterday. Oh yeah, I don't even need to close my eyes. Janine, who goes by the nickname Jandy,

was 19 at the time. She and her family lived a few houses down from the O'Keeffe's. I saw Linda standing like you were he, about this close, and the van is right there in the street. The door is open. Did you think danger? No. I just thought it was odd because I never see those girls without their parents or with one of their siblings. They always stayed together. Jandy wouldn't realize the significance of what she'd seen until that night when she came home from work. Because there was police all over. They were in the alleys. They were in the streets. I said to my sister, I said, what's going on? And she said, Linda O'Keefe is missing.

Jandy immediately went to tell detectives on the scene what she'd witnessed. Jandy immediately went to tell detectives on the scene what she'd witnessed. The sun is setting, and there's still no sign of me. By the morning of July 7th, the search for Linda had intensified. Around 10 a.m., about three miles from the O'Keeffe home, Ron Yeo, a local architect, was biking along a nature trail known as the Back Bay with his young son. Was this place fairly hidden? Yes, but it was mostly people that enjoyed looking at birds and the water and the peacefulness and that. I looked over to the side and said to my son, this is a good place to find frog hugs. Instead, they made a gruesome discovery.

There was this body just nestled right into this little area here. I would imagine that image is pretty clear in your mind still today. It is. After all the time, it's one of the few things I can still remember. They see a young girl's body still in my mom's homemade dress. I've been strangled. This is now a homicide investigation. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal.

There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still a virgin. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse

and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely, Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free,

with a 48-hour plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. The search for Linda Ann O'Keefe is now the search for Linda Ann O'Keefe's killer. Was it someone I knew? A stranger? The man in the van? There are so many questions. So I get home from work around 1, and there's just lots of police cars around the house. I walk up to the porch, and I see my dad just weeping uncontrollably.

Linda's father had been the one to identify her body. It's not making sense to me. Looking and seeing my mom sitting in the living room weeping, the last thing I imagined was that Linda had been killed. It was like being punched. Like the air was knocked out of me. Just two days later, more shocking news. A member of their own community was arrested,

Newport Beach PD Detective Sergeant Court Depweg. There was a suspect that came forward and tried to admit to kidnapping and killing Linda. The supposed killer, a young man named Peter Wooten, who just graduated high school with Cindy. I was looking through my senior yearbook, and I remember thinking, well, he's odd enough that it's possible. I brought him in for an interview, asked him questions only the killer would know. Wooten was held for two days, but nothing connected him to Linda's murder or a van like the one Jandy had seen next to Linda

the day she disappeared. I can tell you right from the get-go, that wasn't him. As it turns out, police say Wooten's confession had just been a ploy for notoriety. How agonizing for your family, for a moment people thought that agonizing for your family. For a moment, people thought that he was responsible for your sister's death. Right.

People were angry. My father was furious. Wooten was released the same day Linda's body was being laid to rest. The room was packed out. There were a lot of my friends from high school. There was Linda's Girl Scout troop. It finally hit me that it wasn't just a bad dream, that it was really happening. Newport Beach investigators went back to square one, trying to identify a suspect. So about here is the spot.

Under hypnosis, Jandy and her mom provided details about the turquoise van and the man they'd seen talking to Linda. They said he was a white male. He had curly hair, tan skin. Newport Beach PD generated this composite sketch based on that description. I tried to give them a license plate, but after the third time I just said, it's not working. I wish I could have helped more. Our 11-year-old selves, we all got on our bikes, and we all wanted to help. We were looking for the van. Did you think maybe it was somebody that you knew? Yes. Oh, yes. Everybody's older

brother was from Scraveney. Because the idea that he was out there, right, to an 11-year-old kid must have been terrifying. It was scary. With no license plate number and just a sketch, investigators were grasping at theories. They were looking for a needle in a haystack at that point. The crime scene provided few clues. Several tire tracks were photographed and examined, but with no vehicle for comparison, it led nowhere. Detectives were hoping the autopsy would provide some leads, but it only told a horrific tale at the time. We knew she had died a pretty violent death. The Orange County Coroner's Office found that Linda had been sexually assaulted and there were ligature marks around her neck.

There was a clear indication she had been strangled. And scratches from Linda fighting for her life. You can only imagine how horrific it was for her, how scared she was. The coroner's office placed Linda's time of death between midnight and 2 in the morning. That's about 12 hours since she was last seen talking with that man in the van. And detectives would learn that at around 11.30 p.m.,

while the massive search for Linda was still underway, a woman who lived in the bluffs up above where Linda's body was found heard a female voice screaming, stop, you're hurting me. But she never called police. That was devastating to the case. It's a missed opportunity that Sergeant Depweg and Detective Mike Fletcher say might have altered the entire case. If that call had been made to the police department, it would have solicited a police response. A massive police response. To that area.

With the resources that were here, that would have put a net around that area and potentially have caught the suspect. And maybe have saved Linda. Yes. Was this a solvable case? I don't know. I think the detectives back then did everything that they could for what they had back in 1973. There was a lot of unanswered questions. Questions that might never have been answered, if not for a forward-thinking criminalist.

Without Jim White, I don't know that we'd be sitting here today. How remarkable is it that this little piece of evidence survived? This one little screw cap vial with two little swabs in it. It lasted all that time. The DNA sat. For years. Sat in a freezer for decades. Decades. Waiting patiently for science to unmask the killer.

My name is Linda O'Keefe. What is his name? See Linda's loss. The grief was overwhelming. The family unity came undone. There were no more family camping vacations. No more visits to the museums. There were no more beach trips.

My mother pretty much isolated in the home. My dad went to work, came straight home. Linda's parents would die never knowing who took their daughter, her mother forever haunted by that last phone call. I think it shortened her life. The guilt, if only, the if-onlys, if only I'd gone and picked her up, she'd still be alive. As the years rolled by, you start to give up hope.

You think, oh, it's just going to be an unsolved mystery. They got away with it. It was almost surreal. Like, did it even happen? Her name wasn't even on the internet. But Linda's picture hung on the wall of the cold case unit, and generations of investigators had never forgotten her name. Did Linda's case stick with you? Oh, absolutely. Even though DNA hadn't yet emerged

as a tool at the time of the murder, criminalist Jim White had collected swabs of the killer's semen from Linda's body and preserved them, having no idea how they'd help the case decades later. I knew it was potentially important because there were semen there, but that it would become as important as it was, I had no envision that testing would become as sophisticated as it became. DNA testing was first done on Linda's case in the late 90s, creating a profile of an unidentified suspect, which was uploaded into the National Criminal Database, CODIS.

But there was no hits. In October 2017, Sergeant Depweg hired a company called Parabon Nanolabs that could generate a snapshot, a composite based on the suspect's genetic characteristics. We now knew for sure that he was a Caucasian male. We had some identifying attributes that we didn't know before because all we had is a composite from 1973.

If science could give the assailant a face, could it give him a name? For over 40 years. A jaw-dropping arrest in another case would prove it was possible. We found the needle in the haystack. In April of 2018, authorities in California announced that Joseph James DeAngelo, a former cop, was the notorious Golden State Killer, responsible for at least 13 murders and 50 rapes between 1975 and 1986. It was the first arrest in a case solved through genetic genealogy, a painstaking process of finding relatives of an unidentified DNA profile, then whittling it down until they came up with a suspect.

We knew at that point we got a chance. We just didn't know how to do it. As it turns out, the Golden State killer's arrest would not just give hope to the Newport Beach police investigators. I posted on Facebook about Golden State. When Dave posted that, they got it by DNA, and I'm like, okay, they gotta have something. Maybe it's Linda's turn. It's Linda's turn.

For Linda's classmates, it was the catalyst to once again try to help solve the case. They formed a Facebook group, Justice for Linda Ann O'Keefe, and went to the Newport Beach Police Department to have the case reopened. Walk right up to the counter and said, this is going to sound crazy, but we want to talk about Linda O'Keefe. You didn't know that the police had her picture up on the wall? No. And they couldn't know what Court Depweg had in store,

that social media campaign that would start two months later and end with the DNA composite. Depweg decided to make it public at the end

of Hashtag Linda's story on Twitter. We were all together on pins and needles waiting to see who is this guy. Forty-some odd years we have been racking our brains. Who could have done this?

Did any of the Twitter leads pan out? No, but by putting that storyline out there, it paid off big time. Hashtag Linda's story didn't yield any substantial leads, but it caught the attention of an instrumental ally, CeCe Moore. I had heard about this case way back in college. Moore had just become the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon, the company that had made that DNA composite. So when Depwig asked her if she would show them how to apply genetic genealogy to find Linda's killer, she was only too happy to help. We needed her to basically hold our hand through this.

To actually have an opportunity to help solve a case that I had known about for 30 years, that's an amazing opportunity. Using the same methods as investigators from the Golden State Killer, they uploaded the killer's DNA profile into a public database called GEDmatch, where people voluntarily submit their DNA looking for family members. That really opened up our investigative leads. Now we were actually identifying people that shared DNA with our suspect. Depweg's investigators and CeCe then had to work backwards

from the suspect's relatives to find him. So you started building your tree? I started building trees. The DNA just gives us a guide. I'm immediately turning to public records, to obituaries, newspaper articles, social media, to try to piece these families back together. So this is our common ancestor way back in the 1700s.

That's wild. With this suspect, you were going, going, going, going, and then you hit a wall. This was a very difficult case. So I need to find someone who descends from each of these common ancestors, and we weren't finding him. But while one family tree withered, another firmly took root. But while one family tree withered, another firmly took root. In December 2018, a commercial DNA testing company called Family Tree DNA opened up its database to law enforcement for solving violent crimes.

It would be a game changer. I remember like it was yesterday, my phone rings and it it's one of the higher-level directors at Family Tree DNA. He says, real nonchalant, I think I have your suspect identified. And I said, oh, you have a close family member match. And he says, no, I think I have your guy. What do you think of investigators using social media for help in cold cases? Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals.

However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases. And this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access,

I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing the best idea yet. A brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with

and the bold risk-takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans. Discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening, you're going to dominate your next dinner party. So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to

The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. In January 2019, more than four decades after Linda O'Keeffe's murder, DNA left by her attacker finally led to a suspect. I was just shocked. They must have misunderstood it, right? It can't actually be a match. After all these years, how do we get so lucky?

The DNA profile that Sergeant Depweg had submitted to Family Tree DNA was a perfect match for this man, James Allen Neal. How did the suspect's DNA end up in family tree's database? He put it in there voluntarily. What kind of criminal mind does that? Luckily for us, not a bright one. As luck would have it, Neal had been researching his own genealogy and even had a public family tree online. So when Cindy Borgeson got a call from Sergeant Depweg, she had no idea investigators

were closing in on her sister's killer. He says, I'm probably going to Colorado in a month. I'll be giving you a call. And I thought, okay, I wonder what's in Colorado. Neal, now 72, was a married father and grandfather living in Monument, Colorado. But before Newport Beach police could make an arrest, they had to make sure their case would stand in court. Cold cases are incredibly difficult to prosecute. Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Eric Scarborough. Having DNA is an incredibly important part of the case, but it's really only the beginning. We had to put him in Newport Beach at that time.

We had to connect him to, you know, the area. And they needed fresh DNA from Neil to compare to the DNA sample from 1973. I looked at Mike Fletcher and said, you're going to Colorado. In January 2019, Detective Fletcher and his team arrived in the dead cold Colorado winter to watch and wait. You got three detectives from sunny California are now in minus six degree weather trying to do surveillance. Detectives from sunny California are now in minus six degree weather trying to do surveillance.

Where James was living at the time was kind of a rural road, and it was really hard to surveil. But they soon discovered Neil was a smoker with an odd habit. Mike called me and said, hey, this guy keeps snuffing his cigarettes out and putting them in his pocket. At first I was thinking, well, maybe this guy's onto the DNA side of things. I'm picturing you guys as he's snubbing out these cigarettes and sticking them in his pocket going crazy. Yeah, there was a moment of that. Come to find out there's an extremely high fine for throwing a cigarette out in Colorado. When Neal finally flicked his cigarette in the parking lot at a grocery store, he had no idea it would cost him far more than a fine. It was submitted to the Orange County Crime Lab, and it was a direct match.

Meanwhile, investigators had also been developing Neal's criminal profile. James Neal's criminal history runs the gambit, from petty crimes to incredibly serious offenses. There's violence. There's sexual assaults. In 1966, Neal was caught with an underage girl in his car and arrested for delinquency of a minor. The 1966 case confirmed it, that this guy had been doing this for a while. Linda wasn't his first. And we knew now we were dealing with a true predator. Just like Linda, he picked her up in Newport Beach.

Do you think this was his hunting ground? I think wherever he was at was a potential for a hunting ground. Newport Beach PD discovered suspected sexual abuse by Neal on five other children in other jurisdictions. What was his M.O.? He obviously preyed on girls from the ages of 7 to 13. That was his primary target. And he would gain their confidence quickly. At the time of Linda's murder, Neal lived in Orange County, less than a half-hour drive from

where she was abducted in Corona Del Mar, and his real name was James Albert Layton. But soon after Linda was killed, he turned up in Florida under his new identity. His new name popped up during an arrest in Florida two months after Linda was murdered. I think it leads us to believe that he got out of town to escape from answering for what he had done. But there was no escaping when Newport Beach police arrived at Neal's home in Colorado, armed with a warrant for his arrest, captured on police video.

What was his demeanor like? Relatively cool, calm, and collected. Depweg and Fletcher escorted him to the El Paso County Sheriff's Department in Colorado Springs. He started talking on the drive over. We started with his history of sexually molesting other girls, and he was very open about it. He had an excuse for it. He said that, oh, I was drunk, but he admitted to it. But when it got to Linda's murder, Neil was about to get a lot less agreeable. You remember this girl, Jim?

No, sir. Have you ever seen her before? No. She looks almost like one of my kids' pictures. But you don't remember this little girl? It looks almost like one of my kids' pictures. But you don't remember this little girl? You don't remember picking this girl up on the side of the road? I've never picked up any kids, ever.

Over a three-hour cat-and-mouse game, Neil refuses to take the bait, even when confronted with his DNA on Linda's body. Single source. Male. Guess who's yours? This is 100% match. I can't explain it. So you're telling me it's just miraculous that your semen got on her? It must be

miraculous because it wasn't me. He understands DNA. He knows you have his DNA and yet still he says to your faces. He just can't bring himself to say the words. And even though Neil had admitted to molesting other girls, he can't admit to murder. I am not going to admit to something I didn't do.

I would never kill anybody. In one eerie moment, Neil is left alone with Linda's photo when he looks at her face and offers a twisted apology. I'm tired of you, but it wasn't me. There's something about the phrasing of that that is just so creepy. How does that strike you? I'm sorry, baby, but it wasn't me.

It's almost familiar. He recognizes her, but he still wants to distance himself from the crime. This is him acting. Jim, you've had 45 years to convince yourself that you did not do this. It's time to take responsibility for what you did to this little girl. I didn't, I don't need to be responsible for something I didn't do.

Neal refuses to take any responsibility, but detectives already had what they needed. but detectives already had what they needed. The evidence in this case speaks for Linda louder than James Neal ever could deny he wasn't involved. You did do it, Jim. No, I didn't. You're being arrested for the murder of Linda O'Keefe. No, I'm sorry. I didn't do it. You're being arrested for abducting her, sexually molesting her,

and then murdering that 11-year-old girl. Oh, God. Yeah. The Newport Beach police had their man, but about James Neal's arrest, Cindy got the call from Sergeant Depweg that brought her family saga full circle. He said, are you sitting down? And he said, we arrested him this morning. And I remember like the day Linda's body was found. Everything slowed way down. I was so excited.

I felt, I wish my parents were here to hear this news. James Neal, now 72 years old, was arrested by our detectives yesterday at 6 29 a.m pacific time in Colorado Springs for the murder of Linda Ann O'Keefe. On February 20th, 2019, the Newport Beach Police Department and the Orange County District Attorney held a joint press conference to share the news. He's being charged with murder and two special circumstances, kidnapping and an act during the murder of a lewd and lascivious act upon a child under the age of 14. of a lewd and lascivious act upon a child under the age of 14. Linda's classmates were overcome with emotion. Shocked, happy, elated, and angry.

He took this girl's life and went on to live his life. I was glad that he was still alive so he could be punished. This is the kind of case that you know you're going to do everything you can to hold the defendant accountable. But accountability looked very different in 1973, and Eric Scarborough would have to work with the laws in the books at the time the crime occurred. In 1973, Mr. Neal would have only been facing seven years to life. When you hear seven years, it blows your mind. However, thanks to the information unearthed by Newport Beach PD's investigation, the DA could up the ante by bringing in Neal's other alleged sexual assaults on children. So you could pull cases from other counties to establish, hey, this is

his pattern of behavior. That's exactly what we were going to do. And they found even more evidence thanks to Newport Beach PD's viral Twitter campaign. Even though it hadn't led directly to a suspect, hashtag Linda's story allowed them to get search warrants for all of Neil's electronic devices to see if he'd followed the case. They didn't find any searches about Linda, but what they found was just as disturbing. Evidence of child pornography, copious amounts of that to go through.

The Orange County DA ultimately combined Linda's case with charges for two other young girls Neal had allegedly sexually assaulted between 1995 and 2002 in Riverside County, California. Those cases had never been prosecuted and were still within the statute of limitations. If Neil was convicted on all three, it'd be enough to put him away for the rest of his life.

There was other information we had that unfortunately was out of statute and we weren't able to charge it. But we do know that there were other victims out there. Neal's family declined our requests for interviews and never made any public statements about the charges against him. During his arraignment in Orange County Superior Court, Neal pleaded not guilty on all counts. Now, Eric Scarborough would have to make jurors feel a sense of urgency on the decades-old case. How do you bring this case alive to a jury? That's the real challenge of the cold case. But really what it comes down to is finding ways of using that evidence,

including the DNA, to tell the girl's story. Evidence like Linda's school bag found a few feet away from her body. Her mother had made it for the Fourth of July, and its contents,

a perfect time capsule of her harrowing last moments. A half-eaten orange, a little toy, school supplies and art supplies, her socks and urine-stained underwear. What does that tell you? This tells you about what happened to her in her last minutes.

This is the backpack of virtually any 11-year-old you might find today. And then you come to the evidence of her underwear, and you realize that something very bad had happened to her. She's scared. Terrified. That information is essential. But a jury would never get to hear it.

In the summer of 2020, James Neal died of natural causes in custody. There's no doubt in my mind he would have been convicted. The biggest heartbreak. The story ended so bizarrely, just as it began. And we were hoping to see the end of this guy standing before a jury and being convicted. So, David, you're the one who put the Facebook page up, Justice for Linda.

Right. Was this justice for Linda? In some way, but truly justice, no. But I think it's closure. Closure and relief for Linda's sister, who says she forgave Neil before she even knew his name. I couldn't carry that pain in my heart. Obviously, God is protecting me from a trial that would have been traumatic, because for years we thought, protecting me from a trial that would have been traumatic because for years we thought what did they do for 12 hours together what happened with linda's case officially closed her photo no longer hangs among the unsolved at newport beach pd

but she'll always live among Cindy's precious memories of a more innocent time. There's a portrait. It's the only family portrait we ever had done. When their family was still whole. My mother looks like Jackie O. My dad looks typical dad in the 60s. My dad looks typical dad in the 60s.

And the three of us girls are just smiling, beaming from ear to ear. What do you take from Linda's story? To be grateful for every day, the good and the bad. And grateful for the unexpected friends along the way. This whole support group of people that knew her that are now friends of mine, and their support and their encouragement and all of it was really fantastic. She mattered. And I really like to think and hope that our efforts helped just a little bit. Thank you to my family, friends, and schoolmates who never gave up hope.

Thank you to the generations of investigators who worked on my case. Because of you, my story didn't end in July 1973. A devastating nightclub fire. 100 dead. More than 200 injured. People who were key to understanding this tragedy had remained silent. Why are you sitting here talking to me? We wanted the full story to come out. 48 Hours, Saturday on CBS.

If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.