Diana Green

In 1979, Diana Green was a 20-year-old woman living in Tustin, California, and looking forward to a bright future. She and her husband, 21-year-old Marine Corporal Kevin Green, were excitedly preparing for the birth of their first child. Diana, a white female, was nine months pregnant, and the young couple had been shopping for their baby and attending Lamaze classes, filled with the hopeful energy of soon-to-be parents. Although their marriage had seen its share of arguments, which had occasionally drawn the attention of police, they were committed to working through their problems and building a family together.

The life they were planning was shattered in the early morning hours of September 30, 1979. After spending a quiet evening watching a movie at home, Kevin left around 1:30 a.m. to get food. Finding the line at a nearby drive-thru too long, he drove to another restaurant about 15 minutes away. When he returned roughly 40 minutes later, he found the kitchen door to their ground-floor apartment slightly ajar. Inside, he discovered Diana in their bedroom, brutally beaten. She had been raped, strangled, and struck in the head with a blunt object that left a wound so severe Kevin initially thought she had been shot. Diana was rushed to the hospital, alive but unconscious. A little over eight hours after the attack, the heart of her unborn baby girl stopped beating. Doctors performed an emergency C-section, but the child did not survive.

Diana survived the assault but fell into a deep coma. The Tustin Police Department’s investigation quickly focused on her husband. Detectives found Kevin’s story of driving 15 minutes for food suspicious, and they knew of the couple’s history of domestic disputes. When semen recovered from Diana was tested, the blood type was found to be O, which matched Kevin’s. Though a common blood type, it was enough circumstantial evidence for investigators to build a case. They dismissed Kevin’s account of seeing a suspicious man near a van in the parking lot as a fabrication.

Two months later, Diana emerged from her coma with severe brain damage and amnesia, unable to recall the attack. Her doctors warned her family not to suggest memories to her, as her injured brain could easily mistake suggestions for real events. Over time, however, Diana developed a "memory" of the night and told police that Kevin had been her attacker. On November 30, 1979, based almost entirely on her testimony, Kevin Green was arrested. He was charged with the second-degree murder of their unborn child, attempted murder, and assault. Despite his unwavering claims of innocence, a jury found him guilty after just two hours of deliberation. In 1980, he was sentenced to 15 years to life in San Quentin State Prison.

For years, Kevin maintained his innocence from behind bars, refusing to show remorse for a crime he did not commit, which repeatedly cost him his parole. Meanwhile, a serial rapist and killer known as the "Bedroom Basher" had been terrorizing Orange County, responsible for a string of similar attacks on women in their homes. In the mid-1990s, cold case investigators utilized advancements in DNA technology to re-examine evidence from those crime scenes, including the attack on Diana Green.

In 1996, the DNA evidence yielded a match: Gerald Parker, a former Marine and convicted sex offender who was just a month away from being paroled. When detectives interviewed him, Parker confessed to the brutal assault on Diana Green. He recalled specific details of the crime and expressed that it had always bothered him to learn he had attacked the wife of a fellow Marine. Based on Parker’s confession and the irrefutable DNA evidence, Kevin Green was exonerated and released from prison in October 1996 after being wrongfully incarcerated for 16 years.

Gerald Parker was subsequently convicted for a series of rapes and murders, including the attack that took the life of Diana’s unborn child, and was sentenced to death in 1999. The case stands as a powerful illustration of a tragic wrongful conviction and the profound ability of forensic science to bring the truth to light decades later. After his release, Kevin Green expressed compassion for his ex-wife, stating that while he was a victim, his suffering was nothing compared to the permanent damage she endured. The case is now considered solved and is closed.