In the 1990s, John Kevin Woodward was tried twice on charges that he killed his roommate’s girlfriend, a high school three-sport athlete and computer engineer who was found strangled in her car in Mountain View, California.
The first trial ended in a hung jury, and in the second the judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence, prosecutors said.
Now, more than 25 years later, prosecutors have again charged Mr. Woodward with the 1992 murder of Lori Houts after forensic technology linked him to the murder weapon, a rope.
Woodward, 58, president and CEO of ReadyTech, an online training company, was detained Saturday at Kennedy International Airport in New York after arriving from Amsterdam, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. this week.
He was charged with the “strangulation” of Ms Houts and was due to stand trial in Santa Clara County after extradition from New York, the statement said. He faces up to life in prison if convicted, the release said.
Ms. Houts’ younger sister, Cindy, said that when she first heard that Mr. Woodward was being charged again, her reaction was, “Yes!” But then she realized that the conviction would not bring her sister back. She and Ms. Houts’ older sister, Susie, spoke in a joint interview, asking that their last names be withheld for privacy reasons.
“She hasn’t been here in 30 years and we miss her again,” Cindy said. “Also, we’ve been through two trials, so we know how hard it will be to get through the trial. And we hope this one has a good result.”
Todd D. Greenberg, a lawyer who represents Mr. Woodward in New York, said Mr. Woodward had agreed to return to Santa Clara County during a hearing Monday in Queens Criminal Court and was “eager to to the California courts to answer these allegations, which he vehemently denies.
A statement from Mr Woodward’s company, which has its headquarters in Oakland, California, and an office in the Netherlands, said the news of his arrest “was a shock to all of us”.
“Our deepest sympathies go out to the families involved,” it said.
On September 5, 1992, a passerby found Ms. Houts dead in her car near a junkyard about a mile from the Adobe Systems office where she worked. The rope that killed her was still around her neck. Her prints were on the inside of the windshield, “a sign of her struggle with Woodward,” the district attorney’s statement said.
Mr Woodward was soon considered a suspect, the statement said. Prosecutors said he was “openly jealous” of Ms Houts because he had developed an “unrequited romantic attachment” to his roommate, who was her boyfriend.
When the boyfriend asked Mr. Woodward if he had killed Ms. Houts, prosecutors said Mr. Woodward avoided answering the question and instead “asked what investigators knew” as police listened in on their conversation.
Mr. Woodward was arrested in 1992 and tried twice for the murder, the authorities said.
The first trial ended with a jury in 1995, the Mountain View Police Department said. The following year, a judge dismissed the case after a jury in a second trial failed to reach a verdict, prosecutors said.
The judge said in the second trial that there was not enough evidence to prove that Mr. Woodward was motivated by jealousy, The San Jose Mercury News reported.
Mr. Woodward’s fingerprints were found on the outside of Ms. Houts’ car, but investigators in 1992 were unable to show that he had been inside the vehicle, prosecutors said.
After the second trial, Mr. Woodward moved to Holland.
In 2020, detectives began re-examining the case and again sent evidence from the investigation to the Santa Clara County Crime Lab, police said.
New technology was used to process a DNA sample taken from the rope, police said. The test found that Mr. Woodward’s skin cells were on the rope, according to Jeff Rosen, the district attorney.
Investigators also used new technology to determine that fibers from the sweatpants in Mr. Woodward’s car were “virtually indistinguishable” from the fibers found on the rope, police said.
Together, the evidence “put the rope in his hands,” Mr. Rosen said in an interview.
More than 80 latent fingerprints collected at the time of Ms. Houts’ death were also re-examined, resulting in more fingerprints matching Mr. Woodward, police said.
“Homicide is incredibly serious and life-changing for those around the victim and we don’t forget that,” Mr Rosen said. “We didn’t forget it and the Mountain View Police Department didn’t forget it.”
Mr Rosen said Dutch authorities, working with the US Department of Justice, obtained a warrant and searched Mr Woodward’s home and business in the Netherlands, seizing computers and USB drives.
Ms Houts’ older sister, Susie, said her sister, who played basketball, volleyball and softball at San Jose’s Gunderson High School and could hit 25 free throws, was a ”happy, very funny, loving person , who treats everyone like family.”
The sisters said they shoot penalty kicks in Lori Houts’ honor every year on her birthday.
“We’re happy to have a chance for some measure of justice,” Suzy said in an interview. “We’ve waited patiently for 30 years.”
Add Comment