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California Police Solve 1974 Cold Case Murder of Debra Curb
The 17-year-old was killed on New Year’s Day nearly 50 years ago, but investigators have finally delivered closure through DNA evidence.
The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office in California has announced it can finally close a cold case murder dating back almost 50 years after DNA evidence was successfully used to identify a suspect.
Debra Curb was 17 and a student at Fresno High School in 1973, where she was described as a jovial, excellent pupil. On the last night of that year, she held a small gathering at her family home while her parents were away in Pismo.
Together with her boyfriend and another couple, Debra listened to some music and put together puzzles to welcome in the New Year. Once the clock passed midnight and it was officially 1974, the party wrapped up and the young host said goodbye to her guests.
Tragically, this brief period would be all Debra saw of a potentially promising year ahead. When her parents returned home on the afternoon of January 1st 1974, they found her lying dead with her own leotard wrapped around her neck.
An investigation quickly began and police started to look into the people who had seen Debra last, namely those who attended her party hours earlier. It wasn’t long before detectives began to suspect 17-year-old James Arthur Blaylock, who had driven the others home when they left the property.
They theorised that Blaylock might have returned to the Curb family home after doing this, using a spare key he had noted the location of to enter the home and rape and murder Debra.
Frustratingly, though, a theory was all it remained without any hard evidence. In 1974, there wasn’t the forensic technology to support it and detectives couldn’t prove what they so strongly suspected: that Blaylock was a dangerous killer. Slowly, the case went cold.
In 2006, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office revisited the investigation and tried running some of the biological evidence taken from the crime scene through newly-available tests for DNA. This time, there was a breakthrough: the sexual assault kit was a match to James Blaylock.
