This photo provided by the Yuba County Sheriff's Department shows Larry Don Patterson, who was arrested by authorities in Oklahoma on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, on charges related to the 1973 slayings of... (Associated Press) 
 
 This photo provided by the Yuba County Sheriff's Department shows Larry Don Patterson, who was arrested by authorities in Oklahoma on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016, on charges related to the 1973 slayings of Valerie Lane, 12, and Doris Derryberry, 13, in Yuba County, Calif. (Yuba County Sheriff's Department... (Associated Press) 
 
 MARYSVILLE, Calif. (AP) — An investigator "with a bit of free time" decided to send for testing DNA samples from a long-dormant cold case, which led authorities to arrest a pair of men linked to the 1973 shotgun slayings of two young girls, authorities said. 
 
 Police in Oklahoma and California arrested the two 65-year-old suspects Tuesday morning for the murders of Valerie Janice Lane, 12, and Doris Karen Derryberry, 13. 
 
 The seventh grade classmates told their mothers they were going to a mall shopping near their homes about 40 miles north of Sacramento on Nov. 12, 1973. Witnesses saw them in their neighborhood that night, but neither girl returned home. Both suspects were living in Olivehurst at that time, investigators said. 
 
 Two boys were target shooting and found the girl's bodies about 20 hours later, according to news accounts at the time. Investigators say the girls were driven to a wooded area and shot at close range. 
 
 Authorities then and now said a large-scale investigation was immediately launched and some 60 people interviewed over a three-year period before the case went cold for a lack of solid leads and was shelved in 1976. 
 
 In March 2014, an investigator doing a routine look through cold cases decided to send semen samples found on Derryberry's body and preserved for 43 years to the state Department of Justice forensics lab for analysis. Seven months later, state DOJ technicians reported that the DNA in the semen matched the genetic profiles of cousins Larry Don Patterson and William Lloyd Harbour, who each committed serious enough crimes since 1973 to have their DNA samples collected and placed in law enforcement computer systems. 
 
 "Over time, anyone that's been assigned to our investigations unit for any length of time looks into some of the unsolved cases that we have," Yuba County Sheriff Steve Durfor said. "And this was one in particular that one of our investigators had a bit of free time and really looked very closely at this case and identified that we should send some things off and see what it might yield for us." 
 
 Durfor said both suspects served prison sentences. Patterson was arrested in 1976 for raping two women and again in 2006 for failing to register as a sex offender, Durfor said. Harbour had felony drug convictions, Durfor said. 
 
 Patterson was arrested Tuesday morning in Oklahoma. Harbour was arrested after a traffic stop two hours later near his home in Olivehurst, where the two victims also lived. 
 
 Durfor said the victims' families were told of the arrests Tuesday morning and have requested privacy. 
 
 The families "have endured decades of suffering and grief for not knowing who was responsible for the brutal murder of their loved ones," Durfor said. 
 
 "We're asking for the family to have time to process this news," said Stan Vantassle, Derryberry's nephew. "We would like to have time to come to grips with this." 
 
 Some of the family members are now elderly and "have waited for something for 43 years for an answer as to what happened to their kids," Yuba County District Attorney Patrick McGrath said. 
 
 "Olivehurst, 43 years ago, was a very small community — still small," McGrath said of the town of about 14,000 people. Harbour lives near one of the victim's families, and "inevitably there will be contact between various families and this is a situation we had to talk to them about. There will be a lot of frustration, there will be a lot of anger, a lot of things that we need to be concerned about." 
 
 The twin slayings four decades ago shocked the small community and the nation, he said. 
 
 "Back in 1973, this simply didn't happen," he said. "This was a big deal. Still is, obviously." 
 
 The girls' slayings made headlines around the nation at a time when such killings seemed rare, McGrath said. Both men will face murder charges, he said. 
 
 It took more time to reopen an investigation so old that several of the investigators and the pathologist who conducted the autopsy have since died, McGrath said. They then had to locate Patterson, who is being held as an unregistered sex offender while he awaits an extradition hearing from Oklahoma to California. 
 
 "We literally were looking in five different states," McGrath said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Talley reported from Oklahoma City. Associated Press writer Olga Rodriguez contributed from San Francisco. ||||| MARYSVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Decades-old DNA led to the arrests Tuesday of two men in connection with the shotgun slayings of two girls in California more than 40 years ago, authorities said. 
 
 They arrested one suspect in Oklahoma and another in California after comparing their DNA with semen from both men found on one of the victims, 13-year-old Doris Karen Derryberry. 
 
 She and 12-year-old Valerie Janice Lane, both of Olivehurst, California, were reported missing by their mothers on Nov. 12, 1973, after they failed to return from a shopping mall in nearby Linda that the girls had visited the previous day. 
 
 A few hours later, the Yuba County Sheriff's Department was notified that the bodies of two girls had been found alongside a dirt road in a wooded area near Marysville, north of Sacramento, where they had been shot at close range with a shotgun, Sheriff Steve Durfor said. 
 
 Arrested Tuesday were two 65-year-old cousins, Larry Don Patterson of Oakhurst, Oklahoma, and William Lloyd Harbour of Olivehurst, California. Both were age 22 at the time and living in Olivehurst, a small agricultural town in California's Central Valley. 
 
 Durfor said both have since served prison sentences that resulted in their DNA being collected: Harbour for drug offenses in 1997 and 2003, and Patterson for a 1976 arrest on charges of raping two adult women in Chico, also in northern California. Patterson also had a 2006 arrest for failing to register as a sex offender, Durfor said. 
 
 The families "have endured decades of suffering and grief for not knowing who was responsible for the brutal murder of their loved ones," Durfor said. They were informed in a meeting Tuesday and requested privacy, officials said. 
 
 Some of the family members are now elderly and "have waited for something for 43 years for an answer as to what happened to their kids," Yuba County District Attorney Patrick McGrath said. 
 
 The girls' slayings made headlines around the nation at a time when such killings seemed rare, McGrath said. Both men will face murder charges, he said. 
 
 The homicide case remained an active investigation until 1976, when the case went cold following more than 60 interviews but no successful leads, authorities said. 
 
 But investigators meticulously preserved their evidence, Durfor said, and in March 2014 Yuba County investigators reviewed the case for evidence that could be retested with newer technology. Evidence collected during the original investigation was reviewed and submitted to the California Department of Justice Forensic Labs for analysis. 
 
 That December, testing revealed that DNA evidence was matched and identified the two men as suspects. 
 
 It took more time to reopen an investigation so old that several of the investigators and the pathologist who conducted the autopsy have since died, McGrath said. They then had to locate Patterson, who is being held as an unregistered sex offender while he awaits an extradition hearing. 
 
 "We literally were looking in five different states," he said. 
 
 Patterson was arrested in Oklahoma's Creek County, southwest of Tulsa, the U.S. Marshals Service said. Patterson was being held in the local jail on multiple charges involving the deaths, said Tommy Roberts, the supervisory deputy U.S. marshal in Tulsa. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Talley reported from Oklahoma City. ||||| LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two cousins linked through DNA testing to the 1973 murders of two girls in a small northern California town were arrested on Tuesday, more than four decades after the crime, authorities said. 
 
 William Lloyd Harbour, 65, was taken into custody on Tuesday morning at a traffic stop in Linda, California, 40 miles south of Sacramento, the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department said in a written statement. 
 
 Larry Don Patterson, also 65, was arrested at a secluded compound near Oakhurst, Oklahoma, south of Tulsa. The men were 22 at the time of the murders. 
 
 According to the sheriff’s department, 13-year-old Doris Karen Derryberry and Valerie Janice Lane, 12, were reported missing on Nov. 12, 1973, after failing to return from a shopping trip to Linda the day before. 
 
 The bodies of the two friends were found hours later alongside a dirt road in a wooded area of nearby Wheatland. Derryberry had been sexually assaulted and both girls killed by shotgun blasts at close range. 
 
 The case remained unsolved until March 2014, when investigators reviewing the case with improved forensic testing linked DNA evidence to Harbour and Patterson. 
 
 The DNA hit prompted a lengthy new investigation which culminated in the arrest of the two men, who were expected to face murder charges, the sheriff’s department said. 
 
 Leslie Carbah, a spokeswoman for the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department, said that investigators knew that Harbour was still living in the area but that it took them until Tuesday to find Patterson, with the help of U.S. Marshals. 
 
 Patterson, who was convicted of rape in 1976, was also wanted for failing to register as a sex offender and was hiding from law enforcement for that reason, she said. 
 
 “It took us basically until today to finally put eyes on Patterson,” Carbah said. “A lot of this was hinging on bringing them both into custody at the same time. The challenge was to keep it as quiet as possible, not tip them off and drive them underground.” 
 
 William Lloyd Harbour, 65, one of two men arrested Tuesday for the 1973 murder of two girls in Linda, California, is seen in an undated picture released by the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department in Marysville, California. Larry Don Patterson, 65, was also arrested in connection with the same case in Oakhurst, Oklahoma. Yuba County Sheriff’s Department/Handout via Reuters 
 
 She said Harbour was expected to make an initial court appearance in Yuba County on Wednesday while Patterson faced extradition proceedings in Oklahoma. 
 
 Meanwhile, more than 200 miles to the south in San Luis Obispo, police and FBI agents spent last week digging near a California university campus looking for remains of Kristin Smart, a freshman who disappeared 20 years ago. 
 
 There was no indication that the two cases were related.
– Authorities have finally made arrests in the death of two girls in California more than 40 years later. Police say 65-year-old cousins Larry Patterson and William Harbour murdered Doris Derryberry, 13, and Valerie Lane, 12, after they vanished from a shopping mall in 1973. The girls were found dead, each shot by a shotgun, beside a dirt road in Marysville hours after they were reported missing, per the AP. Doris had been sexually assaulted and semen was collected from her body. However, it was only sent for testing in March 2014 by an investigator who "had a bit of free time and really looked very closely at this case," Sheriff Steve Durfor tells the AP. The semen matched DNA samples taken from Patterson and Harbour during previous arrests, police say. Patterson—convicted of rape in 1976 and wanted for failing to register as a sex offender, per Reuters—was arrested Tuesday in Oklahoma. Harbour, who has felony drug convictions, was also arrested Tuesday in the girls' hometown of Olivehurst, Calif. The men were 22 at the time of the murders. After "decades of suffering and grief," Durfor says the girls' families can finally have some closure. They "have waited ... for 43 years for an answer as to what happened to their kids," adds a Yuba County DA. (This missing woman could be buried on the Cal Poly campus.)