O.C. prosecutors to review 1979 slaying for ties to Golden State Killer

Orange County prosecutors agreed Wednesday to review a decades-old murder investigation after an attorney said she detected similarities to attacks by a notorious California serial killer.

The district attorney’s office agreed to review the conviction of William Evins in the killing of a 28-year-old woman in 1979 as part of a long-standing program that looks into old cases upon request. But the office said that it’s too soon to tell where the review will lead and that the evidence will have to be examined to determine whether DNA testing is a possibility.

Attorney Annee Della Donna, who runs the pro bono Innocence Rights of Orange County, said she made the request after detecting apparent similarities in the now-deceased Evins’ case with those connected to the so-called Golden State Killer.

Authorities in Northern California arrested former police officer Joseph DeAngelo, 72, in April and said they believe he is the killer who had long proved elusive to authorities. DeAngelo is charged with 12 killings throughout the state from the 1970s and 1980s, including one in Orange County in 1980.

As a teen, Della Donna said, she was the victim of an abduction attempt and years later saw a sketch of the Golden State Killer suspect that she thought resembled her attacker. She started looking into rape and murder cases that had occurred nearby and came across Evins’ case, she said.

She said that she lived six blocks from victim Joan Anderson, 28, and that the way Anderson was killed bears similarities to cases involving the serial killer. She also said Evins, who died in 2013, pleaded guilty after a jailhouse informant said he had confessed to the crime.

“We believe that this murder was another Golden State Killer case,” she told reporters, adding that she had also contacted Sacramento County sheriff’s officials and the FBI.

“It’s too early to tell if there’s similarities or not,” said Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff for the prosecutor’s office. “We don’t know.”