It took 45 years to DISCOVER THE TRUTH. The Shocking Story of Linda O’Keefe 

It took 45 years to DISCOVER THE TRUTH. The Shocking Story of Linda O’Keefe 

PART1

An 11-year-old girl walked out of school and disappeared without a trace. For years, this case has been one of the most confusing and creepy in California with many unexpected twists and turns and strange facts. It took 45 years to finally uncover the truth, but the story didn’t end there, either. In this video, we’ll tell you what happened to Linda O’Keefe and why this investigation has caught the attention of millions of people around the world.

Linda O’Keefe was born on May 24th, 1962 in Newport Beach, California, USA. She grew up in a large and close-knit family. Her father was a machinist and her mother was a seamstress. Linda had two sisters, an older sister and a younger sister. Linda was fond of drawing, played the piano, and loved nature and animals very much.

 On warm summer days, she did not miss any opportunity to go out to the beach, which was only 800 m from her home. The girl was also a Girl Scout and attended summer school. In July 1973, when Linda was 11, she went there almost every day. Usually, she rode her bicycle to school, but on the morning of July 6th, a piano teacher who lived a few houses away from the O’Keefe family agreed to give her a ride.

After class ended at about 1:30, Linda used the school phone to call her mother. She asked to be picked up because she was without her bicycle that day, but the woman was working at home at the time and didn’t want to be distracted, so she told her daughter to walk. Even though it was only a little over 2 km from school to home, Linda didn’t want to walk.

 After talking to her mother, she even cried and the school secretary thought about giving her a ride home. But, the woman needed to go the other way, so she gave up the idea. Linda came out of the school, sat outside the building for a while, and headed toward home. Her route should have taken no more than half an hour, but the girl was clearly delayed.

At first, her mother did not think much of it. She thought Linda had met her friends and gone for a walk, but with each passing hour, she became more and more worried. By 6:00 p.m., her mother decided to call everyone she knew whose children lived nearby and might have gone out with her daughter, but none of them had seen Linda that day.

When her father returned from work, the family decided to go looking. They drove all over the neighborhood, including the route Linda was supposed to take back from school. At that point, the parents assumed the girl had resented her mother for refusing to pick her up and was deliberately not going home. But, when they still could not find her and it began to get dark outside, they decided to go to the police.

Officers took a missing girl report and began their search. Meanwhile, her father and older sister went out again to comb the neighborhood in two cars, while her mother stayed home, calling dozens of people who at least with the slightest chance could see Linda. The search continued throughout the night.

 Police searched the streets and parks using search dogs and helicopters, but it was inconclusive. By morning, the police department had dispatched more officers to join the search and local newspapers were already reporting on the massive operation involving the disappearance of the 11-year-old girl. At about 10:30 a.m.

, a bicyclist and her friend and son were riding through a park that was 9 km from Linda’s house. They headed there to observe the local fauna for the botanical circle. Father and child dismounted and headed toward the ditches to see frogs, but something else awaited them there. Noticing something light in the grass, the man walked closer and saw there a human body partially covered by water.

In the morning paper, he had read about the disappearance of a girl who had been searched for all night by the police. So, he immediately thought that the body belonged to her. In the next few minutes, the man and his friends ran out of the park, got into their cars, and rushed to find the nearest payphone to report their find.

On the way, they encountered an officer who had been part of the search for Linda. Upon hearing their story, the police officer reported it and headed toward the location. The investigators instantly realized that the deceased was Linda O’Keefe. She was wearing the same clothes the girl left for school, and her backpack was lying next to her.

This, as well as the white dress worn by the girl, had been made for her by her mother. She was not wearing shoes, however, and they were never found near the body. Detectives proceeded to examine the crime scene. They found tire tracks on the ground near where the body was found, but no other clues. Medical examiners determined that strangulation was the cause of death.

They determined that the death occurred between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. Investigators understood that Linda had most likely been abducted shortly after she left school, which meant that the perpetrator had held her somewhere for about 12 hours. The victim was also abused, and experts found traces of DNA on her body.

They were given to the laboratory for safekeeping, since DNA analysis had not yet been performed in those years. With no serious leads on hand, the detectives set about looking for witnesses. They interviewed all of Linda’s friends, school employees, and residents of the streets where the girl was supposed to walk home.

Soon, it bore fruit. On her way home from school, the girl was seen by her friend, who noticed something strange. Linda was walking along the road, and at some point, a turquoise van approached her. He slowed down and continued to drive next to the girl, but her friend did not see further events, because Linda and the van disappeared from her field of vision.

Almost immediately, police were able to find two more witnesses. The 19-year-old girl and her mother were driving a car about 100 yards from Linda’s school. At one point, they noticed the girl talking to the driver of the turquoise van, who had stopped next to her. It was about 1:15 p.m. The witnesses lived near the O’Keefe’s family and were well acquainted with them, so they were very surprised that Linda was talking to some adult male on the street and decided to watch what was going on.

The passenger door of the van was open, and Linda was standing right in front of it. Apparently, she was talking to the driver, and at some point, the girl got into the car. Immediately afterwards, the van drove away, and the witnesses decided not to pay much attention to it. They thought that Linda had been picked up by a relative or acquaintance, because they were sure that the girl would not get into a car with a stranger.

PART2

After questioning the girl and her mother, investigators got a rough description of the driver. He was a white man between the ages of 24 and 30, with blond curly hair and an elongated face. Unfortunately, the women could not remember the license plate number or even the make of the car. Despite this, the story of the two women was the only solid lead in the case.

 So, investigators put together an APB on the suspect and his car based on the words of these witnesses. They were sent out all over California, but it was fruitless. The detective spoke with the woman a few more times hoping they might be able to recall some additional details. At one point, they were even offered a hypnosis session and they agreed.

 It only partially worked. The witnesses recalled a few additional facts about the suspect’s car, but they were all too insignificant to help find the killer. Soon, the police were able to find another witness. A woman who lived near where Linda’s body was found heard a woman screaming at about 10:30 p.m. She thought she heard someone yell, “Stop hurting me.

” But that voice cut off a abruptly. Given that the girl died around the same time, the witness could have heard it. The detectives then received another interesting tip. On the morning Linda’s body was discovered, the artist was painting a picture in that very park. Noticing dozens of police cars, he began to observe what was going on and realized that something serious had happened.

 At one point, he saw something that struck him as odd. Beside the police, there was a young man in the park watching from the bushes. He was standing quite close to him and the artist decided to ask him what was going on. The young man looked extremely worried and said that the police had found the girl’s body.

 Except that the man and the artist were standing far enough away from where the body was found and could not see any details. The detectives had a logical question as to how the man knew that it was girl’s body they had found, the artist described the man as a thin, white male between 18 and 24 years old, about 180 cm tall with blond hair and sideburns.

This was close enough to what the two witnesses told police when describing the appearance of the van driver. As a result, investigators concluded that this man was the killer, that he had decided to watch the police that morning. Although the police had a fairly description of the killer’s appearance, finding him in the big city was quite problematic.

Two days later, however, something unexpected happened. Peter Wooten, 18, came to them and confessed to the murder. The young man lived near the O’Keefe family and was in the same class as the victim’s older sister, Cindy. The news instantly spread through the town, shocking the residents. Police officers, who did not expect such a turn of events, questioned the boy for 7 hours and also searched his parents’ home where he lived.

 After that, he was formally charged with murder. Three days later, another unexpected twist awaited everyone. Investigators announced that Peter had been cleared of all charges and released. According to them, there were too many inaccuracies in the young man’s confession, and the only coincidences in his story intersected with information that had appeared in the newspapers.

Otherwise, he gave investigators knowingly false testimony, which contradicted the real evidence. Lastly, the two witnesses who had seen Linda with the van driver stated with absolute certainty that it was not Peter. They were both acquainted with the young man because they lived near him, so the women would immediately recognize him.

As a result, the police concluded that the young man was simply trying to draw attention to himself by confessing to someone else’s crime. Maybe the guy had some kind of mental problems, but he had nothing to do with the murder. After that, the detectives weren’t left with a single solid lead. They kept looking for the van and its driver, combing the entire town.

Even Linda’s classmates participated in the search, despite protests from the police. Kids rode their bikes through the streets trying to find that same turquoise van, but all of that yielded no results. In the first month of the investigation, police questioned 175 people, combed every millimeter of the path from school to home, and asked the public for help.

A few weeks later, they decided to release a rough sketch of the van’s driver, but that also yielded no results. Initially, detectives were reluctant to do so because they feared the man might flee town. But every day they had to use more and more tools to solve the case. Two months later, the police had a new lead.

 Another girl had been abused in the same neighborhood. An unidentified man had dragged her into his van, taken her to a deserted place, and after what he had done, let her go. Investigators immediately speculated that Linda’s killer might be behind the crime, but there were inconsistencies. The assailant drove a white van, and description of his appearance did not match the data provided by the witnesses in Linda’s case.

Soon, the detectives were able to get a lead on the suspect. It turned out to be a 32-year-old trucker, and his guilt was proven. Witnesses said that he did not look at all like the man Linda was talking to, and the investigators concluded that this man had nothing to do with her murder. Since then, no significant evidence has emerged in the case, though detectives continue to work on it over the ensuing years.

In 2001, 28 years after the murder, police sent DNA samples from Linda’s body to a lab so they could extract a profile of the killer’s DNA. They succeeded, but the man was not in the FBI database. This indicated that the killer had not been prosecuted in other criminal cases, or it was before the time when they started taking DNA from criminals.

A few years later, experts tried to find his next of kin in that database, but failed again. However, in those years, it was almost impossible to do something like that, because the tools of DNA analysis were far from what we have today. A breakthrough of forensics around the middle of 2010, and the police had a new ability to find suspects.

Investigators in Linda’s case weren’t left out either, and in 2018, they turned to a private lab called Parabon. Detectives received from them a portrait of a man based on the DNA of Linda’s killer. This innovative technology, called DNA phenotyping, allows you to know different traits of a person’s appearance with just a sample of their DNA.

Specialists compiled two portraits at once, showing what the perpetrator might have looked like at the age of 20 and 60. Surprisingly, this portrait was very close to the accounts of witnesses who saw the suspect alive 45 years ago. Usually, in cases like this, police publish portraits in the media to draw public attention and reach out to those who may have known the man.

 But investigators in Linda’s case did something no one had tried before them. On July 6th, 2018, exactly 45 years after the murder, they posted a series of messages on Twitter on behalf of the victim herself. The series of 68 messages described the last day of Linda’s life. The detectives presented this information as if she herself were telling the world what happened to her on July 6th, 1973.

The narrative began in the morning with Linda recounting her day at school, her resentment at her mother for not picking her up in the car, and the girl’s journey home on foot. All of the facts from these messages were carefully selected by detectives to paint the most accurate picture possible of the day. The series of tweets ends with the fact that the search for her killer has so far been unsuccessful.

At which point the police have published a portrait of the perpetrator on behalf of the girl. Now, 45 years later, I can speak again, and there is something important I have to tell you. There is a new lead in my case, a face obtained thanks to the DNA of the killer which he left behind. This technology didn’t exist in 1973, but now it can change everything.

 This approach instantly brought Linda’s case to the attention of a huge number of people around the world. Police officers had shared information on old unsolved cases on social media before, but a narrative from the victim herself was something new. The portrait of the killer himself was useless. It could only help solve the case if someone recognized the person and told the police.

 So, the investigators needed to draw as much attention to these pictures as possible. And they did a great job. In total, more than 7 million people saw the series of tweets. The police received many tips and possible identities of the perpetrator, and detectives spent several months checking them out. But they were never able to find a suitable suspect.

 In spite of this, they were not going to give up, especially after millions of people were interested in Linda’s case. The investigators again turned to Parabon, and this time they asked them to try to find the killer’s relatives through his DNA. Something similar forensic scientists had already tried to do in the early 2000s.

But back then, the necessary tools simply didn’t exist. Almost 20 years later, the situation has changed. Parabon’s experts were successfully finding people related to the owner of the DNA. And with this information, investigators could find the perpetrator. Work on finding Linda’s killer began in August 2018.

It took experts almost 6 months to get the first results. Using private DNA databases, they were able to find the killer’s third cousin. For detectives, that effectively meant they were one step away from solving the case. All they had to do was research the man’s family tree and come up with a suspect.

 But the experts at Parabon kept digging deeper. And soon, they had an unexpected discovery. They found the killer’s own DNA in one of the private databases. He had voluntarily uploaded his sample to a database that allows them to search for lost or distant relatives. As it turned out later, someone in his family had given the man the special genetic kit he needed to get into the database.

45 years later, police finally had a name of the killer, James Allen Neal. The man, who was 72 at the time, lived in another state, and in January 2019, detectives went to see him. Before they could arrest the suspect, they needed to get a sample of his DNA because a private database wouldn’t have the weight the court needed.

 On January 29th, police set up surveillance on Neal’s house and arranged with a garbage service to hand them anything the suspect threw out. After obtaining several items from which experts could take a sample of his DNA, investigators sent them to the lab and then continued to monitor James for the next 3 days. Unfortunately, forensics was unable to get a sample of the man’s DNA, so the detectives needed to find something else. They soon had that opportunity.

They observed the suspect as he sat in his car in the parking lot smoking. He then threw the cigarette butt on the pavement and drove away, and the police immediately picked up the evidence. This time, experts were able to extract a DNA sample, and it matched the DNA of the killer found on Linda’s body exactly.

 This meant that it was James Neal who was the very perpetrator they had been searching for almost half a century. A few days later, detectives organized a press conference at which they finally announced the arrest of the suspect. James Neal was born in 1946 in Chicago, after which his family moved to California.

 His parents often beat and humiliated him and subjected him to violence, which caused him to behave aggressively from an early age. As a teenager, he committed various petty offenses, including breaking into other people’s houses. After that, he dropped out of school and tried to get a job, but he never stayed in one place for more than a few months.

It turned out that the man had an extensive criminal history. He was arrested more than 12 times for crimes of varying severity, theft, car theft, robbery, but almost every time he got off with minimal punishment and then went back to his old ways. At the age of 25, James married for the first time and the couple settled in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

Their home was a half-hour drive from the city where Linda lived and 2 years after moving in, he killed her. James’ wife was pregnant at the time and the perpetrator himself was on probation for less serious crimes in another state. After that, he was cited several more times for theft and counterfeiting bank checks and he also spent a short stint in prison for violating the terms of his probation.

Upon his release from prison, James was caught by the police three more times for traffic violations. He divorced his first wife with whom they had two daughters. He lived in different states for a while, but then returned to Colorado and married another woman in 1997. She had a child from her first marriage and soon she and James had a daughter.

After examining his background in more detail, detectives found that the man may have been involved in dozens of cases of child abuse, but he was never held accountable for what he had done. In 1995 and in 2004, Neal kidnapped two girls by driving up to them in his car. He abused them and then released them.

In both cases, he was never proven guilty, so James remained free. Police later suspected him of at least five more similar episodes in which an unknown man in a car abducted girls from the street. In 2010, a girl who went to the same church as James complained about him. She admitted that the man, who was 63 years old at the time, had been molesting her for months.

In all, the victim reported several similar episodes and Neil confessed. The only thing that happened next was something incomprehensible. The case was somehow hushed up. The victim recanted her accusations and the man went unpunished. James returned to his usual life and for the next 9 years, he was not in the sight of police until he was arrested for Linda’s murder.

When questioned, the man denied any involvement and said he had never kidnapped the girls. When shown a photo of Linda, he said he had never seen her. With the man adding that she looked like one of his daughters. Given that the suspect’s DNA was clearly on the victim’s body, the court should have found him guilty anyway.

Nevertheless, investigators tried to get as much evidence as they could. They wanted to find out if James had a turquoise van, but could not find a single confirmation of that fact. However, this was quickly explained. At the time of Linda’s murder, he was a worker in an apartment complex and had access to the service van.

During the search of his home, investigators found several hard drives containing illegal materials. Similar photos and videos were also found on his smartphone. Something interesting was also found on his computer. It turned out that James had studied the history of violent criminals who had been caught through DNA analysis.

Apparently, he was well aware that it was DNA that could help the police link him to various atrocities. Another surprising discovery awaited the detectives after James was examined before moving into a cell. He had a tattoo of Linda’s name on his wrist. Investigators thought he had left a reminder of his victim that way.

However, it turned out to be an eerie coincidence. James had gotten the tattoo long before the murder and the police were able to confirm it. The trial was supposed to start a year after the arrest in February 2020, but it was postponed because of the pandemic. James continued to insist his innocence, but detectives no longer doubted that he had killed Linda.

 However, the case never came to trial. In May, James was admitted to the hospital where he died two days later of lung cancer. He did not know about his illness before his arrest and when it was discovered, it was too late to begin treatment. Thus, the half-century-old case was finally put to rest. Detectives still believe that James may have had many more victims and they intend to keep investigating in that direction.

Linda’s parents passed away long before the police found the perpetrator. Her mother blamed herself for what happened throughout her life as she refused to pick up the girl from school. Linda’s sisters thanked the investigators for not giving up on the case and getting to the bottom of it. Their only regret was that their parents had not lived to see the day.

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