GALT, Calif. — The Galt Police Chief and Sacramento County District Attorney said DNA from fingernails helped them solve a Galt 1988 cold case killing.
The announcement comes nearly three decades after 79-year-old Lucille Hultgren was killed in her Galt home. On Tuesday, the Galt Police Department said they had matched DNA from the victim's fingernail scrapings to the suspect.
Authorities identified Hultgren's killer as Terry Leroy Bramble. Galt Police Chief Brian Kalinowski said Bramble was a transient, registered sex offender who lived under a Highway 99 bridge until he later died of natural causes in 2011.
Terry Leroy Bramble was 32-years-old when he sexually assaulted, stabbed and strangled Lucille Hultgren inside her home, Kalinowski said.
Bramble's DNA, collected during a 1992 sexual assault conviction in San Joaquin County, matched DNA found in fingernail scrapings collected from Hultgren's body, helping detectives solve the 34-year-old cold case, said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.
"The fingernails were the key to solving this case," Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said during a press conference.
On May 23, 1988, two friends, who had gone to Hultgren's home to check on her after she didn’t attend church the day before, found her dead in her bedroom and called police, Kalinowski said.
A mother of two adult children, Hultgren lived alone after her husband's death the previous year, Kalinowski said.
The coroner at that time said Hultgren had died two to five days before her body was discovered and that the cause of death was stab wounds to the chest and strangulation, Kalinowski said.
Hultgren’s killing was the only cold case in the town of 25,000 people 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Sacramento, authorities said.
Authorities said the motive for Hultgren's killing is still unknown.
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