DNA match leads to arrest in 1980 Oxnard slaying
When 15-year-old Stacy Knappenberger was killed in 1980, Oxnard investigators were at a loss.
The body of the Hueneme High School student was found in her home. She had been beaten and stabbed multiple times, and authorities suspected she had been sexually assaulted.
But there were no arrests until this week, when, guided by a DNA match, officers in Fairfield, Ala., converged on the home of Thomas Young Jr., 65, a Vietnam veteran described by a next-door neighbor as mild-mannered and religious.
“I am totally taken aback,” said Eleanor Rogers, his neighbor in Fairfield. “He always appeared to be so very nice and respectful. We would plant flowers together.”
Paul Knappenberger, Stacy’s father, said Friday that he didn’t know Young and doubted that his daughter had either.
“I believe he stalked her,” he said.
Knappenberger, who has been in touch with detectives over the years, said he planned to be at Young’s arraignment, which had not been scheduled as of Friday.
“I’m relieved that, after 32 years, this is finally coming to a conclusion,” he said.
In a statement thanking Oxnard police and Ventura County prosecutors, the family said it was “hoping to have closure in the death of Stacy, and possibly give hope to others still waiting for justice for their loved ones.”
Oxnard Police Chief Jeri Williams called the arrest “a very rewarding day for law enforcement and a tribute to the good work that was put into this case over the past 32 years.”
When the teenager was killed, DNA technology was in its infancy. It would be nine years before California prosecutors used DNA evidence to deliver a conviction.
But evidence collected at the crime scene was kept, and technological advances allowed it to be re-examined in 2000. It took another 10 years to match it with the DNA of a suspect included in the Combined DNA Index System, a national database that contains DNA profiles of those arrested or convicted in crimes.
Young was identified as the suspect.
An Alabama native, Young “had a hard time finding work” when he returned to the Birmingham area after his Army stint, said Randy Christian, chief deputy sheriff of Alabama’s Jefferson County.
“He married a lady here who had family in California,” Christian said. “She went to visit her family, and he followed soon after in the late 1970s and early 1980s.”
Young returned to Alabama in the mid-’80s, and moved to Illinois in 2008 before landing back in Alabama last year and moving with another woman into the house in Fairfield, a town of 11,000 near Birmingham. His DNA profile was entered into the national database in Illinois on a sexual assault charge, Christian said.
Rogers said she understood he had been wounded in the military and was living on disability payments. She said Young and his “lady friend” held two prayer meetings a week in their home and were preparing for one when he was arrested.
“We talked sometimes and he never mentioned California,” she said. “There was nothing about him outwardly that I would call suspicious.”
Following the DNA hit, the case was assigned to the Ventura County cold case task force. With Oxnard investigators, they followed a number of additional leads, police said.
Young was located with the assistance of the sheriff’s office in Jefferson County, Ala., and arrested about 2:30 p.m. Thursday.
He was booked into the Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham on suspicion of murder and is awaiting extradition to Ventura County.
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