Discovery of the DNA Link Among the Harrington, Witthuhn, and Cruz Cases

The discovery of a DNA match among the Harrington, Witthuhn, and Cruz murder cases transformed a long-standing suspicion into a forensic link. In late 1996, criminalist Mary Hong found that the profiles from Keith and Patty Harrington and Manuela Witthuhn matched a profile from the murder of eighteen-year-old Janelle Cruz. Cruz’s case had not previously been proposed as connected to the others, despite her home being only two miles from Witthuhn’s in the same Irvine subdivision. The result expanded the investigation from two cases to three—and arrived too late for Roger Harrington, who had spent years searching for his son and daughter-in-law’s killer.

From Suspicion to Cold-Case Review

The possible connection between the Harrington and Witthuhn murders had never been ruled out, but the cases went cold without a decisive lead. Investigators in Santa Barbara had raised the possibility of a broader series, while officials in Ventura and Orange County were skeptical. The proposal remained unresolved rather than disproved. For Keith’s father, Roger, that uncertainty became a long-running pursuit: he hired a private investigator, offered a substantial reward, and urged friends and co-workers to speak again with investigators. He also consulted a clairvoyant in desperation. None of these efforts yielded the information needed to solve the cases, and the details of the murders continued to occupy his thoughts.

A renewed review of Orange County cold cases created another route into the problem. Between 1972 and 1994, the county had investigated 2,479 homicides and cleared 1,591, leaving nearly 900 unsolved. The lab’s strategy prioritized homicides involving sexual assault, in part because repeat offenders could leave biological evidence suitable for DNA typing. Mary Hong was assigned to concentrate on cold cases. Jim White, who had worked at the lab during the earlier investigations, urged her to focus on the Harrington and Witthuhn cases. He told her, “I always thought it was the same guy.” Hong had not worked at the lab when the murders occurred, and the names meant nothing to her at first; White’s recollection gave the cases priority for review.

Testing the Cases

In late 1996, Hong retrieved the Harrington and Witthuhn rape kits from the Property Room. The Orange County Crime Lab had recently adopted PCR-STR testing, a method better suited than the older RFLP process to the tiny or degraded samples often encountered in cold cases. The distinction mattered because evidence preserved for years could be difficult to analyze using a technique that required a larger, intact sample. The new method gave investigators a practical way to revisit biological evidence that had long been stored without producing a useful lead.

The discovery emerged through comparison, not a new tip. As 1996 drew to a close, Hong reviewed a spreadsheet compiling about twenty unsolved cases for which DNA profiles had been developed. The table cross-referenced case numbers and victims’ names with results at five PCR loci, or genetic markers, then in use. Hong already knew that the Harrington and Witthuhn profiles matched. While scanning the other entries, she noticed a further profile that appeared identical. She read the sequence several times and compared it again with the two known profiles before concluding that the match was real. White responded, “Same guy.”

The Third Case and the Wider Pattern

The matching profile belonged to Janelle Cruz, whose body had been found in her family’s Irvine home on May 5, 1986. No one had previously suggested that Cruz’s murder might be related to the Harrington or Witthuhn cases. Yet Cruz lived in Northwood, the same subdivision as Witthuhn, and the two homes were just two miles apart. The difference in age also made the cases seem distinct: Cruz was eighteen, roughly a decade younger than Patty Harrington and Manuela Witthuhn. The geographic proximity and the DNA results therefore supplied a connection that investigators had not reached by comparing the cases on their apparent characteristics alone.

The result also changed the nature of the evidence. Earlier suspicions had rested on investigators’ assessment of similarities among separate crimes; Hong’s comparison established that the biological profiles matched across all three. Its importance lay not only in confirming a link between the Harrington and Witthuhn cases, but in bringing Cruz’s murder into the same investigative frame. The spreadsheet functioned as a tool for seeing relationships that had been obscured when each case was considered in isolation.

The News Roger Never Received

For Roger Harrington, the breakthrough came after his death. An Orange Coast magazine profile of his search ended with his stated determination: “That’s why I keep living: I don’t want to go till I find out.” The DNA tubes that advanced the investigation were opened and tested in October and November 1996. By December, investigators were ready to call the families, but Roger had died on March 8, 1995, a year and a half earlier. The files had held the possibility of an answer while his search continued without it; when the laboratory finally produced a link, he could not be told.

The result would also have corrected one of Roger’s interpretations of the crime scene. He believed that the killer had covered Keith and Patty’s heads with a bedspread out of remorse. The account makes clear that this was not the reason: after a previous killing had become messy, the killer did not want their blood on him. Roger never learned this explanation, nor the further information about the killer’s history that the investigators could have shared. The DNA match thus marked a major investigative advance while underscoring the painful distance between a family’s search for meaning and the evidence that eventually emerges.