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. 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. 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. 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 had been interviewed and knew he was a suspect in the killing and would soon be arrested, Rorrison said. 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.
– 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.)