After investigators in California closed an over 30-year-old cold case murder, the victim's sister said her prayers were finally "answered."
Utilizing advanced forensic genetic genealogy, police in Ventura, California, announced they recently determined Larry Devon Welch murdered 42-year-old Danielle Clause, whose battered and sexually assaulted body was recovered near downtown in 1991.
With no solid leads at the time, Clause's case soon went cold.
"I remember she was so badly beaten that she was unrecognizable," her sister, Marcia Forte, said in a video released by VPD Tuesday. "And I didn't want my mother to see her like that. It was just devastating, no holidays and I always prayed, not so much that there would be justice, but that I would be able to know who did this. Thirty-three years later, my prayers were answered."
Police reopened Clause's case in 2021 and retested crime scene evidence for DNA. Through forensic genetic genealogy, Welch – who investigators believe was a stranger to Clause – was positively identified as her killer.
Welch died in 1999.
"I'm so grateful that I live to see at least a meter of justice that they found out who did this, even though he died eight years after she was killed," said Forte. "My sister was so much more than a victim of a brutal murder. She was more than an artist, a sister, a mother, a wife. She was more than all of those things. She was a good person with a mighty soul and she was taken way, way too young."
