Another cold case heats up

Andrew Edwards

For the second time in two months, Laguna Beach police have made an

arrest in a decades-old homicide.

Police used DNA evidence to arrest a man in connection with the

1983 murder of a prostitute who was found dead on Laguna Canyon Road.

On July 29, Det. Paul Litchenberg and Investigator Lou Gutierrez,

a former Laguna Beach detective now working for the Orange County

District Atty.’s office, arrested 57-year-old John Laurence Whitaker

in Gresham, Ore.

Whitaker confessed to the slaying shortly after being arrested,

police said.

Almost 21 years ago, the partially nude body of 26-year-old

Patricia Ann Carpenter was discovered at a Los Angeles Times

distribution unit on Laguna Canyon Road. The Orange County coroner

discovered Carpenter had been strangled to death. Officials took two

days to identify her body.

Carpenter was last seen alive in Los Angeles by her sister, who

said she saw Carpenter drive off with her pimp at about 2:15 a.m. on

Dec. 17, 1983. About four hours later, her body was found by

employees at the distribution center, police said. Throughout the

next 20 years, detectives re-examined the evidence until making a

breakthrough in January.

“It was in the evidence lockers ... it’s one of those things they

kept going back to and back to and back to,” Capt. Danell Adams said.

In January, Litchenberg, aided by records manager Dawn Garner,

re-opened the case file. The pair found a small envelope containing

fingernail scrapings taken from Carpenter’s body. The scrapings, tiny

shreds of skin, were delivered to the Orange County Crime Lab for DNA

testing.

In April the results came in, and the DNA evidence pointed to

Whitaker, a registered sex offender since 1985 known by law

enforcement to use at least 18 aliases. Whitaker is originally from

New York but spent many years in the Los Angeles area before moving

to Oregon. Litchenberg contacted the Gresham Police Department and

learned that Whitaker lived in that community.

Litchenberg and Gutierrez flew to Oregon, and after finding

Whitaker, arrested him on suspicion of failing to register as a sex

offender and interrogated him about the homicide.

Whitaker confessed to picking Carpenter up near Wilshire Boulevard

in Los Angeles before strangling her, Adams said. Police do not know

if she was killed in Laguna or Los Angeles, or somewhere between the

two cities.

Whitaker has not waived extradition, and it could be about one

month before he shows up in an Orange County courtroom, Adams said.

Police officials said they do not expect there will be any difficulty

in bringing him to trial locally.

Whitaker’s arrest was the second time in recent months Laguna

police used DNA evidence to take a cold case suspect into custody. In

June, Litchenberg and Sgt. Jason Kravetz went to Michigan to nab

48-year-old James Paul Snider. Snider allegedly killed Ronald Jay

Murphy in December 1983 by battering Murphy’s head with a toilet seat

at a Laguna hotel.