Police in Ventura County have announced that they solved a murder case which had gone unsolved for over three decades.
According to the Ventura Police Department, the body of 42-year-old Danielle Clause was found on a hillside at the top of Tioga Drive in Ventura on July 16, 1991.
An autopsy revealed Clause had been sexually assaulted and had died due to multiple blunt-force injuries to her head, police confirmed.
“Once investigators at the time explored every avenue, the case was suspended and considered cold,” the Ventura Police Department said in a media release.
A breakthrough in the case came 30 years later in 2021, when detectives and forensic specialists retested crime scene evidence for DNA. By using forensic genetic genealogy technology that didn’t exist in the 1990s, they were able to piece together a family tree and verify “distinct characteristics” of the suspect by using phenotyping.
Based on their new evidence, detectives identified the suspect as Larry Devon Welch.
Welch, who had no known connection to Clause, died in 1999.
Clause’s family is grateful that they finally have closure after 33 long years of not knowing what happened to Danielle.
“My sister was so much more than a victim of a brutal murder; she was an artist, a daughter, a sister, a mother and a wife…she was a good person with a mighty soul, and she was taken way too young,” said Danielle’s sister Marcie Forte. “I didn’t really believe that the police were going to solve this, because there are other crimes being committed all the time…I’m so grateful that I lived to see at least a meter of justice and that they found out who did this.”
The Ventura Police Department released a video outlining the details of the case, with interviews from original investigators, current detectives and Clause’s family. To watch the video, and to learn more about existing cold cases, click here.
Any new information regarding this cold case or any existing cold cases in the Ventura area should be submitted to coldcase@venturapd.org
