The brutal 1982 rape and murder of a 13-year-old Cloverdale girl has been solved, thanks to DNA from a cigarette butt.
James Oliver Unick, 64, was found guilty last week of murdering teen Sarah Geer — a hard-won conviction after a decades-long cold case investigation searching for her depraved killer.
The jury’s verdict will send Unick — who was arrested in July 2024 — to a lifetime in prison without the possibility of parole.
“This guilty verdict is a testament to everyone who never gave up searching for Sarah’s killer,” said Carla Rodriguez, district attorney for Sonoma County, in a statement.
“This is the coldest case ever presented to a Sonoma County jury. While 44 years is too long to wait, justice has finally been served, both to Sarah’s loved ones as well as her community.”
The twist-filled quest for justice began late May 23, 1982, when Geer walked to downtown Cloverdale from a friend’s home, prosecutors said.
Along the way, a vile sicko snatched Geer, dragging her down an alley and behind a fence near an apartment building.
The degenerate brutally raped Geer and strangled her to death by twisting her own shorts around her neck, prosecutors said.
Geer’s body was found the next morning, prompting a probe by Cloverdale police that ultimately was thwarted by the limits of 1980s forensic science, officials said.
But not all hope was lost — in 2003, a California Department of Justice criminalist developed a DNA profile from sperm collected from Geer’s underwear, prosecutors said.
No match was found, however, until Cloverdale detectives and Kevin Cline, a private investigator with experience in cold cases, tapped the FBI for help.
The FBI’s access to familial genealogical databases matched the DNA evidence to one of four brothers, including Unick, prosecutors said.
A definitive match came after Unick — who was under FBI surveillance — flicked a cigarette butt.
The discarded cigarette was tested and showed Unick’s DNA matched with the profile developed in 2003, prosecutors said.
Cops arrested Unick at his home in Willows, about 120 miles from the secluded spot where Geer’s body had been found four decades before.
Unick, who pleaded not guilty, first contended he didn’t remember the events of May 23, 1982.
But when he took the stand during his month-long trial, he claimed that Geer had propositioned him for sex while he played a video game at a Cloverdale arcade. He was 19 years old at the time, and told jurors that Geer claimed to be 16, The Press Democrat reported.
Unick claimed he had consensual sex with Geer near the Russian River and implied another man must have murdered her later that evening, prosecutors said.
Jurors didn’t buy Unick’s story, deliberating only for two hours before they rendered a guilty verdict on Feb. 13.
With the jury’s finding that Unick committed the special circumstance of sexual assault during the murder, he will be sent to life in prison without the possibility of parole during his sentencing hearing scheduled for April 23.