The conviction of a man in the murder of a Stratford woman in California has been overturned.
Twenty-eight-year-old Lynne Knight was working as a nurse in California in 1979 when police say she was brutally murdered in a case that caught the attention of the nation.
According to media reports, investigators say she was planning a trip back home to be in her sister’s wedding when she was killed in August of that year.
Three suspects, including Douglas Bradford, who had dated Knight, were investigated but the case was suspended in 1982 because of a lack of sufficient evidence.
It was reopened in 2000 and investigators say the wire used as part of the weapon to kill Knight was found to be the same class as that of wires used to hang pictures in Bradford’s mother’s house.
He was convicted of the murder in 2014 and sentenced to 26 years to life in prison but that’s now been overturned after a federal appeals court ruled that the judgment was made on circumstantial evidence after exculpatory evidence of another suspect was excluded.
Jurors were not told of another viable suspect, who dined with the victim the night of the murder and was the last known person to see her alive. That person had also previously subjected her to physical violence.
Scott Schwebke is an investigative reporter with the Southern California News Group covering the case and he says he’s surprised it was overturned.
“This doesn’t happen that often, I mean they don’t usually send an entire case back to the lower court and say there was a serious error in this.”
It’s now up to prosecutors who have 30 days to decide if they want to retry Bradford.
