— A retired San Diego police criminalist apparently killed himself after being linked to the murder of a 14-year-old girl three decades ago, authorities said Thursday. 
 
 The body of Kevin Charles Brown, 62, was found Tuesday at Cuyacama Ranch State Park in the San Diego County town of Julian and his death was being investigated as a suicide, police said, although details were not immediately released. 
 
 Police had been working with the county district attorney's office and were planning to arrest Brown, who had been informed that he was under investigation, homicide Lt. Paul Rorrison said. 
 
 "I can only surmise that was part of the reason" that Brown apparently committed suicide, Rorrison said. 
 
 In November 2012, cold-case detectives used DNA evidence to link Brown and another man to the killing of Claire Hough, a 14-year-old girl who was found at Torrey Pines State Beach in August 1984, police said. She had been beaten and strangled, sand was stuffed in her in her mouth and one of her breasts had been cut off. 
 
 Hough, from Cranston, Rhode Island, was visiting her grandparents in the area when she was killed. 
 
 Brown was a civilian criminalist in the San Diego police laboratory from 1982 to his retirement in 2002 but he never worked on the Hough case, Rorrison said. 
 
 Brown was a "generalist" whose job would have included analyzing narcotics and performing other types of evidence work, Rorrison said. 
 
 The other suspect, Ronald Clyde Tatro, was 67 when he died in a boating accident in 2011 in Surgoinsville, Tennessee, Rorrison said. 
 
 The transient's body was found down a river and there was no evidence of foul play, he said. 
 
 Rorrison declined to say whether the two men knew the girl or had earlier been suspects in her death. However, he said DNA testing — which didn't exist at the time of the girl's death — proved to be a crucial piece of evidence. 
 
 Police are still investigating the similar killing of a 15-year-old Lakewood girl six years earlier. 
 
 The naked body of Barbara Nantais was found at Torrey Pine State Beach in August 1978. She had been beaten and strangled and one breast had been sliced. 
 
 Nantais and some friends had been sleeping on the beach. Her boyfriend was struck in the head and badly injured. 
 
 Rorrison said there was no direct evidence linking the two killings. 
 
 "We are not treating them as related cases," he said. ||||| SAN DIEGO — A one-time San Diego police criminalist who died in an apparent suicide in the East County highlands this week was due to be arrested on suspicion of taking part in the gruesome murder of a teenage girl 30 years ago, authorities reported Thursday. 
 
 Kevin Charles Brown, 62, was found dead at Cuyamaca State Park on Tuesday afternoon. Brown evidently had killed himself, SDPD Lt. Paul Rorrison said, declining to disclose what led to that conclusion. 
 
 In November 2012, cold-case homicide detectives uncovered DNA evidence that allegedly linked Brown and a second man to the slaying of 14-year-old Claire Hough, who was found dead at Torrey Pines State Beach on Aug. 24, 1984. 
 
 The girl, who was visiting and staying with her grandparents at the time, had been beaten, strangled and stabbed, and one of her breasts had been cut off, according to San Diego County Crime Stoppers. 
 
 The other suspect, Ronald Clyde Tatro, died at age 67 in a boating accident in Tennessee the year before investigators got the break in the case. 
 
 Brown was civilian lab worker for the San Diego Police Department from 1982 until his retirement in 2002. 
 
 “The investigation confirmed Kevin Brown had no association with any of the evidence processed in this case; nor was he assigned to any part of the murder investigation,” Rorrison said. 
 
 Since the DNA evidence surfaced in the case two years ago, homicide detectives had “conducted extensive investigative follow-ups to bring forward a prosecutable case,” the lieutenant said. 
 
 At the time of Brown’s death, “preparations were being made” for his arrest, Rorrison said. 
 
 The murder occurred six years after a highly similar one at the same northern San Diego beach. In August 1978, 15-year-old Barbara Nantais was found slain with one of her breasts severed. Her boyfriend was nearby, suffering from severe head wounds that had left him semiconscious and with no memory of the attacks. 
 
 It was unclear if Brown and Tatro were considered suspects in the earlier murder as well. ||||| Images from the NBC 7 archive showing the crime scene on Torrey Pines State Beach in 1984. 
 
 Thirty years after a teenager’s body was found on the sand at Torrey Pines State Beach, San Diego homicide investigators say they have identified two suspects in her killing, one of whom was a San Diego Police criminalist. 
 
 Claire Hough, 14, was the victim of a brutal murder on Friday, Aug. 24, 1984. 
 
 The teenager had been staying with her grandparents who lived near the beach. 
 
 When she was found by police officers, she had been beaten, strangled and stabbed, and one of her breasts had been severed. 
 
 Claire Hough's grandparents lived near the beach where her body was found. 
 
 
 
 Using DNA evidence collected at the scene, homicide investigators were able to identity two potential suspects in her murder in November 2012. 
 
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 Detectives say they spent the following two years putting together a case for prosecution. They were preparing to make an arrest when on Tuesday, Oct. 21, Kevin Charles Brown was found dead at Cuyamaca State Park on Highway 79. 
 
 Brown, 62, worked as a criminalist for the San Diego Police Laboratory from 1982 to April 2002. 
 
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 Homicide investigators say they do not believe Brown had any association with the murder investigation or the process of evidence. 
 
 His death has initially been ruled a suicide. 
 
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 The second suspect, Ronald Clyde Tatro, died in a boating accident in 2011. Tatro was 40 years old at the time of the killing. 
 
 According to homicide investigators the two men were identified as suspects in the case through DNA analysis. 
 
 Tatro was identified as a suspect in the killing in August 2014. 
 
 
 
 Anyone with information related to this incident is encouraged to call the San Diego Police Department’s Homicide Unit or Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477. 
 
 San Diego's Unsolved Cold Cases ||||| A serial killer and former Camp Pendleton Marine convicted of slaying eight women in two states in the 1980s and ‘90s, including a San Diego woman in 1988, was found dead over the weekend in his cell on death row at San Quentin State Prison in a suspected suicide, officials said Monday. 
 
 Andrew Urdiales, 54, was sentenced to death on Oct. 5 and had been on death row at the prison on the San Francisco Bay for less than a month. Correctional officers found him unresponsive in his cell about 11:15 p.m. Friday during a security check. 
 
 Correctional officers unsuccessfully performed CPR on Urdiales, who was alone in his cell in the prison’s Adjustment Center, a housing unit for problem prisoners. 
 
 He was pronounced dead at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday. 
 
 “His cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy; however, his death is being investigated as a suicide,” Lt. Samuel Robinson with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement. 
 
 Prison officials offered no other details about his death. 
 
 Urdiales was sentenced to death last month by Orange County Judge Gregg Prickett, who affirmed an earlier death penalty decision by an Orange County jury. That same jury had convicted Urdiales in May of five counts of murder in San Diego, Riverside and Orange counties. 
 
 He’d previously been convicted of three slayings in the Chicago area and sentenced to death, but the death penalty was later abolished in Illinois, so he was re-sentenced to life without parole. He was moved to Orange County in 2011 to be tried for the five Southern California murders. 
 
 Urdiales’ nine-year killing spree began in 1986, and he carried out four of the killings while enlisted in the Marine Corps and stationed at Camp Pendleton in San Diego’s North County and Twentynine Palms in San Bernardino County, according to prosecutors. 
 
 After he was discharged from the Marines and returned to his hometown in Chicago, he killed a fifth woman while visiting Southern California, and he killed three women in Illinois. 
 
 Among his victims was 31-year-old San Diego resident Maryann Wells, who was killed with a gunshot to the head and dumped in a downtown San Diego alley on Sept. 25, 1988. Urdiales was stationed at Twentynine Palms at the time. 
 
 According to news reports from the time of Urdiales’ 1997 arrest in Illinois, Wells’ murder was not initially linked to a series of other unsolved murders because it did not fit the pattern of the other victims being strangled and dumped in a remote, rural area, the Los Angeles Times reported. 
 
 Dom Najolia / AP In this April 25, 1997 file photo, Andrew Urdiales walks in police custody at police headquarters in Chicago. Urdiales was convicted of murdering five women in Southern California and three in Illinois. He died of suspected suicide in his death row prison cell early Saturday. In this April 25, 1997 file photo, Andrew Urdiales walks in police custody at police headquarters in Chicago. Urdiales was convicted of murdering five women in Southern California and three in Illinois. He died of suspected suicide in his death row prison cell early Saturday. (Dom Najolia / AP) 
 
 Urdiales was stationed at Camp Pendleton when he took the life of his first victim, 23-year-old Robbin Brandley, who was attacked as she walked to her car in a dimly lit parking lot following a piano concert on Jan. 18, 1986, at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. 
 
 Before he was sentenced to death last month, Urdiales said he wanted to express his “sincere apologies” to jurors, the judge, prosecutors, victims' families and his own family for having to hear the “gory” details of his crimes. 
 
 Urdiales even praised the Orange County prosecutors who tried him, and to the jurors, he said, “I understand how they voted. If I were a juror on my case I would probably have done the same thing. There's no hard feelings.” 
 
 He also apologized to a woman who escaped from his car after he terrorized her in 1992 in Riverside County. 
 
 Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said in a statement Monday that “Urdiales was a monster who did not deserve to breathe the same air we all enjoy.'' 
 
 Rackauckas said Urdiales ``remained a callous coward until the end as he robbed the victims' families of the right to be present when the state put him to death.'' 
 
 California has 740 prisoners on death row but has not executed an inmate since January 2006. 
 
 About 23 hours after Urdiales was discovered in the Adjustment Center, a second death row prisoner died of suspected suicide in a different area of the prison. 
 
 Virendra Govin, 51, was found unresponsive in his cell in the North Segregation housing unit around 10:15 p.m. on Saturday and pronounced dead 15 minutes later. He and his brother, Pravin Govin, were each sentenced to death for the 2004 murders of a business rival, two of her teen children and her mother-in-law. 
 
 The suspected suicides of Govin and Urdiales were not believed to be related, according to prison officials. 
 
 Since 1978, when California reinstated the death penalty, 25 death row prisoners have committed suicide and 79 have died of natural causes, prison officials said. 
 
 City News Service contributed to this report. 
 
 Twitter: @Alex_Riggins 
 
 (619) 293-1710 
 
 alex.riggins@sduniontribune.com 
 
 UPDATES: 
 
 8:05 p.m.: This article was updated with background information about Urdiales’ crimes. 
 
 5:10 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the suicide of death row inmate Virendra Govin. 
 
 This article was originally published at 4:35 p.m.
– San Diego police have named two suspects in a teen girl's cold-case murder, including a former San Diego Police Department criminologist. DNA evidence found in November 2012 led police to Ronald Clyde Tatro and Kevin Charles Brown—though as of Tuesday, both men are dead. Claire Hough, 14, was found strangled with sand pushed into her mouth at Torrey Pines State Beach on Aug. 24, 1984, the Los Angeles Times reports. One of her breasts had been cut off. Brown, who processed evidence for the force from 1982 to 2002 but was not "assigned to any part of the murder investigation," knew he was a person of interest, FOX 5 reports. The 62-year-old was found dead in a state park on Tuesday, and his death has been ruled a suicide. Tatro was 67 when he died in a 2011 boating accident in Tennessee. Officers had been building a case against Brown over the last two years and were planning an arrest, NBC San Diego reports. "I can only surmise that was part of the reason" he killed himself, a police rep says. Authorities aren't saying what kind of DNA evidence led them to the suspects, how the two men knew each other, or their relationship to the victim. The Rhode Island teen had been visiting her grandparents at the time of her death; it's unclear why she went to the beach that night. Police continue to investigate a similar killing at the same beach in August 1978. The body of Barbara Nantais, 15, was found beaten and strangled, with one breast cut. Police say there's no evidence to link the murders. "We are not treating them as related cases," a rep tells the AP. (A TV show helped bring about an arrest in a 1997 murder.)