Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Cold Case

It is not just a television show. In some ways it is comforting to know that the search for justice goes on, the passage of time does not automatically exonerate the guilty. The cops, the victim's family and others still care, such was the case in Santa Clara, California this week.

Thirty-one years ago, Mary Quigley, a seventeen year old senior at Santa Clara High, was raped and murdered. Her body was found hung from a fence in War Memorial Park in Santa Clara. According to the San Jose Mercury News, "...she had been walking to a friend's house at midnight after a party Sept. 9, 1977. The sash from her kimono-style jacket was found wrapped around her neck and looped through the fence."

DNA evidence finally helped secure the conviction of an already imprisoned rapist. He and the public defender claimed consensual sex and that another group of "drugged-up thugs" now deceased must have encountered the girl and included the actual killer. The jury wasn't buying it.

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