A Bay Area man has been arrested on suspicion of committing at least two unsolved murders over the last 40 years.
James Ray Gary, 76, of Fairfield was taken into custody last week. According to police, the arrest marked the culmination of decades of investigative work.
In July 1980, police in Union City discovered the body of 46-year-old Latrelle Lindsay in her home on the 2400 block of Medallion Drive. The laboratory assistant in the biology department at Merritt College had blunt-force injuries and apparent bite marks on her arms. She had been sexually assaulted and asphyxiated. Union City police discovered the main switch on her home’s electricity had been turned off and a screen on her bedroom window was ripped off.
Sixteen years later, Caltrans workers doing routine road maintenance on Interstate 780 near Spruce in Vallejo discovered a body tucked inside some bushes. It had been wrapped in plastic and was heavily decomposed. The body belonged to Winifred Douglas, 46, of Alameda County. She, too, had been asphyxiated and suffered blunt-force trauma to the head and neck.
For decades, there was no suspect in either seemingly unconnected case. Then, in 2003, Solano County Sheriff’s Office investigators submitted evidence in the Douglas murder for DNA testing. A profile was obtained and run through CODIS, the FBI’s national database. There were no matches.
In 2012, though, the sheriff’s office learned they got a hit: DNA from a cold-case murder in Union City matched their suspect. For the first time, the murders of Lindsay and Douglas were linked.
This month, the Union City Police Department and Solano County Sheriff’s Office were told, at long last, they had a match. According to the sheriff’s office, the DNA in both cases matched Gary, whose DNA was obtained in connection with an alleged sexual assault in the North Bay. Gary was taken into custody at his home near Beck Avenue and West Texas on July 19. He was booked into the Solano County Jail and charged with murder; the sheriff’s office says he is likely to be charged next in Union City for Lindsay’s murder.
Law enforcement is still conducting an active investigation. Anyone with information about either murder is asked to contact the Solano County Sheriff’s Office at 707-784-7050 or Union City PD at 510-675-5227.
Gary is due in court in Fairfield on July 28.