Cigarette butts and a used napkin thrown away at a retail park were the key pieces of evidence needed for a conviction in a 32-year-old cold rape and murder case.
Sarah Yarborough was 16 when she was killed in the parking lot of Federal Way High School, in King’s County, Washington, in December 1991.
She was heading to her school’s drill team event, borrowing her dad's car and driving to school with curlers still in her hair on the morning she was murdered.
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Her mutilated body was found by two boys, 12 and 13, who cut through some bushes on their way to school.
“After leaving the safety of her car, her assailant led or dragged her” into the bushes where her lifeless body was found, prosecutors reportedly told the jury.
As she was attacked, Sarah scratched at the man who killed her as she “fought for her life.”
More than 30 years later, Patrick Leon Nicholas, 59, has been found guilty on one count each of murder in the first degree with sexual intent and murder in the second degree by a jury.
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He was found guilty after DNA evidence, which prosecutors did not find until very recently, narrowed the list of suspects in Sarah’s killing down to Patrick and his brother.
Experts showed that DNA collected from under the girl’s fingernails and semen stains on her clothing “came from a single male contributor,”Law & Crime reported.
After prosecutors quickly found that Patrick’s brother’s DNA was not a match, investigators began surveilling the 59-year-old, eventually seeing that he had let his guard down and dropped enough DNA evidence for them to collect.
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Shortly after cops made the match, he was arrested in a bar in the nearby town of Kent, Washington.
Jurors at King County Court also acquitted on one count of first-degree murder with premeditation during the proceedings on on Wednesday (May 10) afternoon
Patrick is due to be sentenced on May 25.
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