Girl was stabbed in the heart while walking home in 1967. Police still hope to find her killer

Tuesday marked 51 years since someone fatally stabbed 14-year-old Nikki Benedict in her heart as she walked to her Poway home.

Even decades later, the mystery of who killed her haunts her sister, Marianna Bacilla, who was just 5 when Nikki died.

“Nikki’s memory is a very crucial part of who I am,” Bacilla said Tuesday, standing alongside cold case detectives from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. She spoke at a news conference in hopes of generating new leads.

Investigators won’t say much about the evidence — including DNA — because they want to keep some of it under wraps in case there is a break in the case.

“Most evidence procedures that are available to us right now have been completed, and we have not gotten workable leads from that as of now,” said Sheriff’s Homicide Sgt. Todd Norton.

He did say that DNA “is not what would solve this case right now.” What would solve the case, he said, are tips and a workable lead, even a small bit of information that they could follow.

In the days following Nikki’s death, the San Diego Union reported details of the incident and investigation.

Her father told the paper in 1967 that the eighth-grader usually took the school bus home. But on this day, she had visited with a friend and was walking home.

Officials at the time said Nikki, who was wearing a plaid dress, headed down a hill to a dry stream bed, where she was attacked. There was evidence of a struggle at the scene.

Nikki managed to pull herself to a dirt road northwest of the intersection of Poway and Carriage roads.

About 6:30 p.m., an 11-year-old boy riding his bike home from Little League practice spotted the bleeding girl, then raced to the market his father owned to report what he had found.

Deputies and firefighters responded and tried to save her life. But Nikki was pronounced dead when she arrived at the hospital.

Witnesses said they had seen a young man running away from the scene.

The years have brought several theories, some of them farfetched. Some have suggested that the infamous Zodiac killer could not be ruled out.

And all these years later, investigators know it’s possible that the killer is no longer alive. They just want answers, a tip or any sort of a lead.

”We open ourselves up to every theory and we look into those, because our true goal is to solve this case,” said Sheriff’s Detective Will Altenhof, the lead investigator on the cold case.

Bacilla’s family had endured a life-changing situation just months earlier, when a fire destroyed the family’s home in Fallbrook in 1966, a disaster that led to their move to Poway. There was very little left in the ash — but among what they salvaged was a picture that Nikki had taken of Bacilla on her fourth birthday.

“She was very kind. She was unusually nurturing,” Bacilla said of Nikki.

Bacilla said her parents died without knowing who killed their daughter.

Nikki would be 65 now. Instead, her sister said, “she’s frozen at 14.”

Bacilla — who has a Facebook page set up for her sister — said people ask why she doesn’t just let it go five decades later.

“If you could do that, more power to you,” she said. “To do that would take away my humanity.”

Figueroa writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.