Charlotte Lee Lamb, 31, was found murdered on June 24, 1978, in the laundry room of her apartment complex in El Segundo, California. She had been sexually assaulted, severely beaten, and strangled with a shoelace. Her body was posed with her hands behind her back, a detail that investigators saw as deliberate and calculated.

Investigators later linked Lamb’s killing to a series of similar late-1970s crimes. DNA from Lamb’s case matched Rodney James Alcala, a known sex offender who used aliases including John Berger and sometimes posed as a photographer. DNA on a pair of earrings recovered from a storage locker Alcala rented was also matched to Lamb. Alcala was arrested in July 1979 after the murder of Robin Christine Samsoe; police found hundreds of photographs in the locker and used that and the DNA evidence in prosecutions that tied him to multiple victims, including Lamb.