LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — It’s been almost four years to the day since the father of former California Assemblyman Mike Gatto was murdered in his own home.

Joseph Gatto was shot to death in his Silver Lake home. And while the search for his killer continues, the Gatto family isn’t giving up hope.

“I think about my father every day. I try every day to honor his legacy in some way – to make him proud. The holidays are never easy,” he said.

After the killing, police released a suspect sketch. They believe the suspect may have been breaking into cars and threatening neighbors with a gun in the same area around the same time as Gatto’s murder. Still, no one has been able to identify him.

“We’re desperately trying to make sure this is not a cold case – that it’s fresh in people’s minds,” Gatto said. “We really do believe that somebody out there knows something. They saw something, they know something. Perhaps this person bragged to one of his friends.”

Mike Gatto was a state assemblyman at the time of his father’s murder. He says he had enemies but his father – a retired teacher and Veteran – was a friend to everyone.

“He was somebody who had no enemies, beloved by all … someone thing like 500 or 600 of his students attended his funeral. He was such a loved guy. For him to go out this way, it’s very hard to swallow,” he said.

The unsolved crime is a dark cloud for the Gatto family.

But Mike Gatto says he sees his father in his baby son’s eyes.

“This would have been my father’s grandson – we named him Joseph after my father,” he said. “He’s a terrific kid. I just wish my dad could have met him.”

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Cold-case detectives announced the arrest of a man wanted in a 2000 murder in San Bernardino County.

On March 3, 2000, Sheriff’s Fontana Station deputies found body off the side of a road near Lytle Creek.

The deceased was identified as Timothy Morris, then 32.

The cause of death was gunshot wounds. During the investigation, investigators learned Morris lived with his cousin, Carmen Worthey in San Bernardino. Investigators also learned that brothers, John McKinney and Brad McKinney, stayed at Worthey’s apartment for a few days in early March 2000.

Officials said John McKinney also goes by the name John Cory Broyles .He was 24 at the time of the murder.

At the time of the murder, Broyles was identified as a potential suspect, but there was not enough evidence to prosecute him. Investigators followed up with leads, but eventually the case went cold and remained unsolved.

(credit San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department)

In 2017, the cold-case team re-investigated the homicide.

On Oct. 18, cold-case investigators Adam Salsberry and Gerrit Tesselaar traveled to Illinois and arrested Broyles in the killing. Broyles was booked in Madison County, Illinois. He was extradited Wednesday to San Bernardino County and booked into West Valley Detention Center.

Anyone with information regarding this investigation is urged to contact Detective Nick Hartleben or Sgt. Greg Myler, Homicide Detail (909) 387-3589. Callers wishing to remain anonymous are urged to call the We-Tip Hotline at 1-800-78CRIME (27463), or you may leave information on the We-Tip website at http://www.wetip.com.

Kevin “Track Bully” Harris II was an aspiring hip-hop producer who had sold one track to rapper Ice Cube.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Nearly a decade after their son was senselessly murdered while sitting in his car, the victim’s parents are still pleading with the public to help solve his murder.

In an emotional news conference at FBI headquarters Thursday, the mother and father of Kevin Robert Harris II said they have not given up on finding the person or persons who killed their young son nearly nine years ago.

“Yes, we are still crying about Kevin,” said the senior Harris. He and his wife are hoping renewed interest in their son’s 2009 murder, along with help from the Bureau, will lead to the capture of Harris’ killers.

Harris, a music producer, was shot in his car shortly after arriving at his Inglewood studio the night of September 20, 2009. He was 21.

“Why would [God] give birth to an angel, then someone comes and takes his life away for no reason?” tearful mother Kathryn asked Thursday.

That lack of reason or motive has made the case more difficult for the family and investigators.

At the time, police believed the murder was gang-related. However, Harris was not in a gang, nor did he have a criminal history. As there is still no motive for the killing, detectives now believe Harris might have been shot in a case of mistaken identity.

“Not in one interview has anyone said a negative thing about Kevin Harris, and that is unique, and that, too, makes it a little bit complicated in identifying the motive,” FBI special agent Voviette Morgan told reporters.

Every year, the family holds a vigil for Harris at the site of his murder on the 3300 block of 118th Place in Inglewood. That ongoing advocacy prompted Inglewood police to contact federal agents for assistance in the mysterious case.

Based on forensic evidence, detectives now believe more than one person was involved in the murder. A $25,000 reward was offered by the City of Inglewood for information leading to the culprits. The FBI has also offered a its own $25,000 reward.

Harris, also known by his producer name “Track Bully,” was a rising star in the hip-hop world. According to trackbully.net, Harris produced tracks for various artists, including the song “Urbanian” on rapper Ice Cube’s album “I Am The West.”

Harris was also attending college when he was killed.

Anyone with information is urged to call Inglewood police at (310) 412-8771 or the FBI’s L.A. office at (310)477-6565.

SIMI VALLEY (CBSLA)   — Authorities have linked the Golden State Killer to 12 murders.

Officials in Simi Valley now believe that he might be responsible for two more murders — a cold case that is 40 years old.

“Its within the realm of possibility that he could be a suspect in our case,” said Simi Valley Deputy Chief Joseph May.

The deputy chief spoke to KCAL9’s Rachel Kim about the case.

Police are now trying to find out if the accused Golden State killer is the killer in one of their biggest cold cases. Did Joseph DeAngelo murder a young mother and her son in their apartment back in 1978?

“You had the same time period that he was committing crime throughout the state, you had our homicide here, also he is suspected of committing a homicide in Ventura County, we are part of Ventura County,” said May.

Investigators are waiting to see if the DNA that helped identify DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer will also tie him to the murders of Ronda Wicht and her 4-year-old son.

“We’ve made a request for a DNA comparison to find out if the DNA they recovered from Mr. DeAngelo is consistent with the DNA that we have in our case,” May said.

Craig Coley. 70,  is also waiting for the results of the DNA test.He was wrongly-convicted of the murders.

He told Kim over the phone, “I’ve always had hope for [being cleared], even while I was in prison.”

He was released from state prison in November after spending nearly 40 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

He was Wicht’s ex-boyfriend and was wrongly convicted — introducing DNA evidence was impossible back then and evidence used at trial was faulty. Detectives got the samples re-analyzed with modern DNA technology and found that it wasn’t Coley’s.

“I don’t care how they find out as long as they find out and it’s a true conviction,” Coley said.

Whether there is a DNA match to the Golden State Killer or to someone else, all he wants is someone held accountable.

“First of all I’d feel elated for the family, for Ronda’s family,” Coley said, “because I’m not just a victim. I believe that some point in time they will find who did this, and justice will finally be served.”

Police did not know when the results of the DNA tests will be in but said they are actively working the case.

VENTURA (CBSLA)  — Closure didn’t come soon for Shelly Knappenberger and her parents after Shelly’s older sister Stacy was murdered in 1980.

The 15-year-old was found dead after she was raped, beaten and stabbed in her family’s Oxnard apartment.

For over 30 years, the case remain unsolved, and it took its toll on Shelly, her father and Shelly’s mother, who found the body.

“My family, we lost hope,” says Knappenberger.

“Dealing with the loss of her daughter, the mess, the gruesomeness that she saw. To get through those years … they were dark, they were ugly, ugly, ugly,” she says.

But in 2011, investigators got a hit in the database of DNA profiles of violent criminals. The DNA collected in Stacy’s case matched that of Thomas Young.

His DNA was put into the database after he moved to another state and raped someone else. After a jury trial in 2015, Young was convicted of Stacy’s murder. Justice finally served 35 years later.

“Families need it, we should’ve had it. My family should not have had to wait that long for answers,” Knappenberger says.

That’s the reason Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten is now working on a bill that would help bring families like Shelly’s closer to closure.

The proposal known as the Justice Served Act would secure federal funding to help solve and prosecute cold cases involving violent crimes, where suspects have been identified through DNA evidence.

“It’s a huge step forward for prosecutors and more importantly, crime victims,” Totten says.

Totten says the DNA left at a Ventura County couple’s home helped lead to the arrest of a man suspected of being the Golden State Killer. And the district attorney says DNA can also exonerate the innocent — like in the case of Craig Coley. He was recently released from prison after he was wrongfully convicted  for the murder of his former girlfriend and her son in Simi Valley. He spent nearly 40 years in prison.

“We have a duty not only to hold the guilty accountable but to protect the innocent. And DNA is a remarkable tool for us,” Totten says.

The DA says with the renewed interest and advances in DNA technology, this proposed bill would help speed up the investigation and prosecution of the 107 cold cases that have DNA evidence in Ventura County,

“It is a silent witness that is timeless and that also is able to reveal the truth,” Totten says.

Knappenberger believes the Justice Served Act would do exactly that.

“If it could give hope to one family, if it can answer one family’s questions, it needs to pass,” Knappenberger says.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (CBS News/AP) — The federal government has reopened its investigation into the slaying of Emmett Till, the black teenager whose brutal killing in Mississippi shocked the world and helped inspire the civil rights movement more than 60 years ago. The Justice Department told Congress in a report in March it is reinvestigating Till’s slaying in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after receiving “new information.” The case was closed in 2007 with authorities saying the suspects were dead; a state grand jury didn’t file any new charges.

Deborah Watts, a cousin of Till, said she was unaware the case had been reopened until contacted by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The federal report, sent annually to lawmakers under a law that bears Till’s name, does not indicate what the new information might be.

But it was issued in late March following the publication last year of “The Blood of Emmett Till,” a book that says a key figure in the case acknowledged lying about events preceding the slaying of the 14-year-old youth from Chicago.

The book, by Timothy B. Tyson, quotes a white woman, Carolyn Donham, as acknowledging during a 2008 interview that she wasn’t truthful when she testified that Till grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances at a store in 1955.

“She said with respect to the physical assault on her, or anything menacing or sexual, that that part isn’t true,” Tyson told “CBS This Morning” last year.

Two white men — Donham’s then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam — were charged with murder but acquitted in the slaying of Till, who had been staying with relatives in northern Mississippi at the time. The men later confessed to the crime in a magazine interview, but weren’t retried. Both are now dead.

Donham, who turns 84 this month, lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. A man who came to the door at her residence declined to comment about the FBI reopening the investigation.

“We don’t want to talk to you,” the man said before going back inside.

Paula Johnson, co-director of an academic group that reviews unsolved civil rights slayings, said she can’t think of anything other than Tyson’s book that could have prompted the Justice Department to reopen the Till investigation.

“We’re happy to have that be the case so that ultimately or finally someone can be held responsible for his murder,” said Johnson, who leads the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the status of the probe.

Watts, Till’s cousin and co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, said it’s “wonderful” that the killing is getting another look, but didn’t want to discuss details.

“None of us wants to do anything that jeopardizes any investigation or impedes, but we are also very interested in justice being done,” she said.

Abducted from the home where he was staying, Till was beaten and shot, and his mutilated body was found weighted down with a cotton gin fan in the Tallahatchie River. Images of his mutilated body in the casket gave witness to the depth of racial hatred in the Deep South and helped build momentum for subsequent civil rights campaigns.

Relatives of Till pushed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reopen the case last year following publication of the book.

Donham, then known as Carolyn Bryant and 21 years old at the time, testified in 1955 as a prospective defense witness in the trial of Bryant and Milam. With jurors out of the courtroom, she said a “nigger man” she didn’t know took her by the arm.

“Just what did he say when he grabbed your hand?” defense attorney Sidney Carlton asked, according to a trial transcript released by the FBI a decade ago.

“He said, ‘How about a date, baby?'” she testified. Bryant said she pulled away, and moments later the young man “caught me at the cash register,” grasping her around the waist with both hands and pulling her toward him.

“He said, ‘What’s the matter baby, can’t you take it?'” she testified. Bryant also said he told her “you don’t need to be afraid of me,” claiming that he used an obscenity and mentioned something he had done “with white women before.”

A judge ruled the testimony inadmissible. An all-white jury freed her husband and the other man even without it. Testimony indicated a woman might have been in a car with Bryant and Milam when they abducted Till, but no one else was ever charged.

In the book, author Tyson wrote that Donham told him her testimony about Till accosting her wasn’t true.

“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” the book quotes her as saying.

Sen. Doug Jones, D-Alabama, introduced legislation this week that would make the government release information about unsolved civil rights killings. In an interview, Jones said the Till killing or any other case likely wouldn’t be covered by this legislation if authorities were actively investigating.

“You’d have to leave it to the judgment of some of law enforcement agencies that are involved or the commission that would be created” to consider materials for release, Jones said.

(© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

OXNARD (CBSLA) — A grieving daughter is speaking out about what happened to her father who died from a bullet lodged in his head for more than a month.

Melissa Mendoza says her dad Michael raised her and her siblings as a single parent and was a big part of her life. She now feels his absence.

“I miss him so much. I miss my dad,” said Mendoza. “He would do whatever it took to please others and that was his way of showing love.”

56-year-old Michael Mendoza was shot outside his Oxnard apartment around 11:30 p.m. on July 11.

As he was about to go up the stairs, someone in a truck drove by and opened fire. Although Mendoza wasn’t the intended victim, he was shot in back of his head, near his neck.

In the hospital, he told Melissa what he remembered about the night he was shot.

“All he remembers hearing is someone’s name getting yelled and it wasn’t his name. It was someone else’s name getting yelled and then just the sound of a gunshot,” said Mendoza.

Mendoza also told his daughter he remembered seeing the shooter’s face — a face he did’t know or recognize.

He would later be released from the hospital, with the bullet still lodged in his head. He went home and spent time with his family, but Mendoza passed away from his injuries on August 13 — 33 days after he was shot.

“My sisters and I were finding comfort, at least we got a month more with dad in that week of him being home. At least he got to do all the things he loved,” said Mendoza.

Melissa says her dad served in the Navy and had just overcome cancer in this throat. He worked hard as a handyman and graphics designer to support his family. She is angry that a stray bullet took his life.

“Maybe I’ll accept it if someone is held accountable, maybe not, I really don’t know,” said Mendoza.

What Melissa does know is that someone out there has information that can help identify her dad’s killer.

“At the end of the day, it’s the right thing to do, to come forward because my dad deserves that,” said Mendoza. “We deserve that.”

MONTEREY PARK (CBSLA) — Authorities are offering a $20,000 reward for information in the unsolved murder of a well-liked East Los Angeles Community College basketball player.

Saieed Stecoo Ivey was found shot to death early June 9, 2016, in a friend’s Mercedes parked behind his apartment complex in Monterey Park. Ivey and his friends had been celebrating his 20th birthday just hours earlier.

“Although it’s been a couple of years, it still feels like yesterday to me,” his mother said at a news conference. “It’s a cut I don’t think I’ll ever be able to heal from.”

Ivey had come to Los Angeles from Chicago to pursue basketball. He was well liked by his teammates and came up coined the acronym “FINAO” for “failure is not an option.” The acronym now graces a Nike basketball shoe in honor of Ivey.

Saieed Stecoo Ivey was found shot to death June 9, 2016. (credit: CBS)

Detectives say Ivey had left his birthday celebration with his friend’s car keys to meet someone and never came back to the party. The reward, half from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and half contributed by Ivey’s family and friends, is being offered to help drum up leads.

Anyone with information about Ivey’s murder can contact the Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide bureau at (323) 890-5500 and ask for detectives Gus Carrillo or Adan Torres. Anonymous tips can also be made by calling 1 (800) 222-TIPS (8477).

REDONDO BEACH (CBSLA) — Two retired Redondo Beach police officers have cracked a cold case more than 20 years after a man was shot and killed during a grocery run in the South Bay city.

Ted Emery was fatally shot in a parking lot after shopping for groceries in 1995. The case went cold. Then one day in 2012, his daughter, Gail, got a phone call she didn’t expect.

“The last thing I told my dad is I would not rest until they had the person who did it,” she recalled. ” … I just really gave up any kind of hope that this would really happen.”

But it did. Retired Redondo Beach police officers Rick Peterson and John Skipper, who volunteer their time working on cold cases, reached a breathrough. In 2012, they tied DNA evidence preserved since 1995 to determine Elliot Laanui, of Gardena, had murdered Gail’s dad. Then they spent half-a-dozen years gathering enough evidence for the D.A. to try the case.

“They worked on it for six years and they were there every day in court,” she said of the officers, who she calls “superheroes.”

Gail was there every day at the trial as well.

“They brought the suspect in. That was the first time we saw him,” she remembered. “To me he is just pure evil. He’s had a life of crime this whole time.”

Laanui was convicted. His sentencing is scheduled for December 11th, when Gail plans to address the man who killed her father.

“After December 11th, I will be able to start to put it behind me,” she said.

TORRANCE (CBSLA) — Police say they have identified a suspect in the 1972 kidnapping and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Torrance.

Terri Lynn Hollis left her home in the 2600 block of Dalemead Street to go for a bike ride on Thanksgiving Day in 1972. Her body was found the following day by fishermen on a cliff below Pacific Coast Highway in Oxnard.

She was found wearing only a T-shirt, according to a 1972 article from the Los Angeles Times.

Torrance police says its detectives worked the case for several years, conducting over 2,000 interviews and looking into several leads. Detectives in 2000 submitted DNA evidence collected from the young girl to the Los Angeles  Sheriff’s Crime Lab, but there were no hits.

Last year, DNA technology company Parabon-Nanolabs completed a genetic geneaology analysis using only publicly-available databases and got a hit to a possible relative in the case, Torrance police said. Detectives who followed up on the hit followed it to a potential person of interest who had died in Arizona.

(credit: Torrance Police Department)

The body of the person of interest was exhumed and its bone remains submitted to DNA Labs International, which confirmed the bones were a one-in-21 septillion match to the evidence collected from Terri Lynn Hollis.

Jake Edward Brown, also known as Thomas Tracy Burum, was officially named the suspect in the case in July. Detectives say the case of Terri Lynn Hollis is now closed, but they are now looking into whether Brown may have been involved in other unsolved crimes.

LONG BEACH (CBSLA) — Police have made an arrest in the 2006 cold case murder of a 20-year-old Long Beach woman.

Long Beach police officials say new evidence was recently introduced to the case of Tyquesha Myers, who was found deceased on July 15, 2006 after officers responded to the 710 Freeway near Pacific Coast Highway. Homicide Detectives responded to the scene and later observed an injury consistent with a gunshot wound to the upper torso.

Detectives arrested Carl Mayes, a 41 -year-old resident of San Pedro on Friday, according to LBPD. Mayes was the live-in boyfriend of Myers at the time of the murder and the motive is believed to be domestic violence-related, they say.

Mayes was booked for murder and is being held at the Long Beach City Jail on $2 million bail.

Anyone with information about the incident is urged to call LBPD Homicide Detail at (562) 570-7244. Anyone wishing to remain anonymous may call 1-(800) 222-TIPS (8477), text TIPLA plus your tip to 274637 (CRIMES) or visit the L.A. Crime Stoppers website.

SANTA ANA (CBSLA) — Investigators hope new technology will help identify a young man whose remains were found in Trabuco Canyon more than two decades ago.

Five days before Kelly Keyes joined the corner’s office, the remains of an unidentified man were discovered in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. Twenty-three years later, now as supervising deputy coroner, she’s looking at 100 cold cases. But today, her first cold case still haunts her.

Keyes says every few years John Doe’s file has crossed her desk; but all she’s had to go on is unmatched DNA in the sketch — until today. With help from the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, Keyes has two new images created using the latest in reconstruction technology to help finally put a name to a face.

Now, for the first time, she has hope she may be close to solving the case.

“We don’t know whole lot. Our primary thing is we know his age, being 14 to 25 years old. Caucasian. Possibly Hispanic,” she said.

“This is someone’s child … And of we can find out who he is and give him his name back and give somebody their son back I think that’s pretty big for that one family,” she continued.

Keyes said as hard as she tries to leave her work at work, matching unidentified cases with their families is at times more passion than science. She hopes this case, like so many before, will bring a family she hopes to meet some day long-awaited answers.

“We just have a heart to help people. It’s a division of the sheriff’s department of just pure love. And we are taking good care of them until we can find a family to take care of them,” she said.

Keyes added she has good reason to hope: the last time they got sketches this good at the corner’s office, she says it took just two months for the case to be solved.

ANAHEIM (CBSLA)  — Days before the 19th anniversary in a cold case murder was to be observed, detectives in Anaheim announced the arrest of the suspect in the case.

Anaheim Police Cold Case Homicide detectives booked Leopoldo Vargas Serrano, 47, a Houston resident, into the Anaheim Detention Facility.

Officials said that Anaheim Police responded to a business front in the 1600 block of North Miller Street around 2 p.m. on October 16, 2000 and found a man suffering from apparent gun shot wounds.

The victim — later identified as 21-year-old Luis Garcia Bucio of Anaheim — had been shot to death.

The investigation revealed Serrano, a Bucio co-worker, shot the victim during an argument. On November 2, 2000, an arrest warrant was issued for Serrano. Attempts to apprehend Serrano were unsuccessful. In early 2019, Anaheim Cold Case Homicide detectives, in collaboration with the Orange County District Attorney’s TracKRS Unit, learned Serrano had been living under an assumed name in Houston.

(credit: Anaheim Police Dept.)

On September 11, 2019, Anaheim detectives served a search warrant at Serrano’s Houston residence with the assistance of the Houston Police Department.

On that same date, Serrano was arrested by ICE for unlawful entry. Following the ICE arrest, the Orange County D.A.’s Science and Technology Unit assisted Anaheim detectives in confirming Serrano’s identity through Rapid DNA technology.  Anaheim detectives took custody of Serrano from the United States Marshals Service in Houston and transported him back to Orange County,

Serrano is being held in lieu of $1 million bail.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA)  — Actor Robert Forster — who for decades seemed to have the patent in movies and TV shows as the gruff but sympathetic villain — has died.

Forster was 78.

He worked in front of the camera from 1967 through 2019 with no signs of slowing down.

The actor is perhaps best known for roles in the movies “Jackie Brown,”
“Medium Cool” and “Delta Force” and starring roles in series like  the reboot of “Twin Peaks,”

He also had recurring roles in shows like “Heroes,” “Last Man Standing” and “Police Story.”

It was playing the sympathetic bail bondsman Max Cherry that helped reignite Forster’s stalled career.  He was nominated for an Academy Award for the tole.  The poster of an elephant trainer in Cherry’s office was a nod to his father, a real-life animal trainer for Ringling Bros.

Rochester-born, the cause of death was given as brain cancer. His publicist told The Hollywood Reporter the actor died at his Los Angeles home.

Ever the speaker of truth, Forster was one of those actors who didn’t mind admitting that some of the roles he took weren’t about the art, they were about the commerce. Some of the roles were painfully beneath the stature of an Academy Award-nominated actor.

He would say, “I have four kids to feed.”

Twice-divorced, Forster (born Robert Foster) had three daughters and one son.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — The identity of a woman who died in a crash on the 101 Freeway in 1999 remains a mystery 20 years later, and the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office is renewing its efforts to identify her.

The night of Nov. 17, 1999, a woman was driving a maroon-colored 1985 Mitsubishi Galant that broke down in the middle of the southbound 101 Freeway at Western Avenue. The car was struck from behind by another car and sustained major damage.

The woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Because of a fire that resulted from the impact of the crash, the woman’s body was unrecognizable.

Authorities tried to identify her through the car’s license plate, but the crash was unfortunately timed – it had been sold just a few months prior, and the car seller no longer had information on who the buyer was. To make matters worse, the buyer never updated their information with the DMV.

Since the fatal car crash, the woman has been known as Jane Doe #49. She was believed to be between 18 and 35 years old, between 5 feet tall and 5-foot-6, and weighed 149 pounds. Her ethnicity, hair and eye color are not known.

However, the woman did wear two pieces of jewelry that authorities are hoping someone will recognize. Jane Doe #49 wore a clear, Hershey Kiss-shaped pendant with a twisted yellow metal chain and a yellow metal Claddagh ring with a clear, heart-shaped stone and clear round stone.

Anyone with information about the jewelry or the woman’s identity can contact the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner Identifications Unit at (323) 343-0754.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — A $75,000 reward is being offered Monday for information in the murder of a young man in Van Nuys last December.

Osvaldo Hernandez was found with multiple gunshot wounds in the courtyard of an apartment in the 7300 block of Vista Del Monte at about 9:40 p.m. on Dec. 6, 2018. Good Samaritans were giving Hernandez CPR when officers arrived.

Hernandez was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

His father, Javier Hernandez, said his son’s death destroyed his family at a news conference Monday.

“To me, as a parent, he was perfect,” Hernandez said. “I never had a problem with him. Never.”

A second man, Matthew Sanchez, was also found in the courtyard that night with multiple gunshot wounds. He has since survived his injuries.

Police say they are looking for two suspects in connection with the murder and attempted murder. The first suspect was described as a 14- to 17-year-old Hispanic boy with a youthful appearance, a small build, a round head and no facial hair. He is between 5-foot-4 and 5-foot-7 and about 130 pounds and was last seen wearing a black beanie and a dark-colored “Pro Club” hooded sweatshirt.

The second suspect was described as a 22-year-old Hispanic man about 5-foot-9, 180 pounds, with a light mustache and last seen wearing a dark-colored sweatshirt.

A $75,000 reward was approved by the Los Angeles City Council for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Hernandez’s killer.

Anyone with information about the murder can call LAPD detectives R. Dinlocker or M. O’Donnell at (818) 374-1936 or (818) 374-1941.

HUNTINGTON BEACH (CBSLA) — After 52 years, the Huntington Beach police have closed the oldest unsolved murder in Orange County history, the department announced Wednesday.

FILE: Detectives investigate the field where Anita Piteau’s body was found in 1968. (Credit: Huntington Beach Police Department)

“They thought she was still alive,” Chief Robert Handy, of the Huntington Beach Police Department, said. “They didn’t know she was deceased.”

The young woman, recently identified as Anita Piteau, died after being left for dead in a Huntington Beach field in 1968.

“Our detectives went last weekend and took remains back to Maine and had a private burial service with the family so that they could properly say goodbye to their sister they hadn’t seen in 52 years,” Handy said.

Four years ago, detectives asked for the public’s help in identifying the woman — showing photos of the ring and shoes she was wearing the night she was killed.

For the past 52 years, investigators have searched for the identity of a woman who was killed at the age of 26. (Credit: Huntington Beach PD)

Detectives didn’t know it then, but the woman’s suspected killer, Johnny Chrisco, died in 2015. They also didn’t yet know that the items belonged to a 26-year-old woman who wrote her parents daily, or that when the letters stopped, the family hired a private investigator — though answers remained elusive.

“The family was very grateful, obviously, that we didn’t give up,” Handy said. “There’s been generations in our department that have worked this case and taken the evidence that those original detectives processed from the crime scene in 1968 and used today’s technology.”

But detectives could only get so far using familial DNA since the system they use does not have genealogical information. So, in an effort to close the case, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office hired Colleen Fitzpatrick, a forensic genealogy expert.

Anita Piteau was finally laid to rest in Maine, 52 years after her murder. (Credit: Huntington Beach PD)

“I’ve worked the unknown child in the Titanic,” she said. “I’ve worked Amelia Earhart, I’ve worked Abraham Lincoln.”

It took Fitzpatrick one week to track the victim’s family tree to a relative in Maine.

“We contacted him, his name was Steve, and we asked him about his family,” she said. “He had found an obituary that listed a cousin that died and listed this deceased woman’s brothers and sisters, and the last one was Anita Piteau who hasn’t been seen since 1970. I was like, ‘Oh my God.'”

Detectives said Piteau came out to Southern California with friends to see if she could make it in Hollywood.

“I think the message it sends to criminals is, you’re not going to get away,” Hardy said. “It might not be today, but we are not going to give up, and you are not going to get away.”

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — An El Monte man was arrested Thursday on suspicion of murder in connection with the 1996 killing of a 67-year-old woman, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

David Adolph Bernal, 46, was taken into custody in connection with the killing of Mary Lindgren, who deputies said was brutally beaten and raped.

According to the sheriff’s department, Lindgren was a resident at the Covina Villa Retirement Home, an assisted living center for senior citizens in Covina, at the time of her death. She lived alone in a first floor bedroom and was found Jan. 19, 1996 at about 7:30 a.m. by staff at the facility. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

LASD homicide investigators assisted the Covina Police Department with the initial investigation that included the collection of several items of evidence, including DNA believed to belong to the suspect.

During initial analysis, the unidentified male’s DNA profile failed to match any previously existing profiles within the state or federal criminal justice DNA databases.

The department said investigators continued to send out crime broadcasts in the following years about the homicide, but failed to lead to a suspect in Lindgren’s killing.

But in 2019, the unidentified DNA profile was submitted to the state’s DNA search and identification process. And, in July of this year, officials with the California Department of Justice notified investigators that Bernal was a probable suspect in the case.

LASD said Bernal’s DNA matched with the sample collected from Lindgren’s body in 1996 and an arrest and search warrant was issued.

Bernal is scheduled to be arraigned Friday in the Los Angeles Superior Court. His bail has been set at $2 million.

FONTANA (CBSLA) — Police on Monday announced the arrest of a Las Vegas man in the 1980 murder of a Fontana teen.

According to police, enhanced technology to assess DNA evidence links 66-year-old Leonard Nash to the killing of 18-year-old Michelle “Missy” Jones.

Jones’s nude body was discovered in a grapefruit grove in the Live Oak and Santa Ana area, and she had been sexually assaulted.

Detectives got Nash’s DNA from discarded items and it was a match to DNA found through Jones’s autopsy.

Detectives say through interviewing family members, they discovered that Nash was the victim’s sister’s boyfriend at the time of the murder.

“I want to make it very clear to the family that she was never a piece of trash to us and she was never forgotten,” said Fontana Police Department Detective Katie Clark. “It means more to me than you can imagine to solve a case with my partners from 40 years ago.”

Family members also spoke out at a press conference when police shared news of the suspect’s arrest.

“I just wish my mom was here and my dad was here,” said Jones’s sister. “I am happy that he is caught. I am happy that we got closure.”

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — A man arrested on suspicion of killing a 17-year-old Boyle Heights girl in 1996 pleaded not guilty Monday to a murder charge.

Gladys Arellano, seen here in an undated photo, was found murdered in a Topanga Canyon ravine on Jan. 30, 1996 at the age of 17. (LASD)

Jose Luis Garcia, 43, was arrested in September in Dallas, Texas on suspicion of killing Gladys Arellano, whose partially clothed body was discovered at the bottom on a ravine in Topanga Canyon Jan. 30, 1996.

Evidence collected at the time of crime showed that Arellano had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said. The DNA profile collected from the scene was uploaded to both state and federal databases, but a match was not immediately returned.

On Nov. 10 of last year, Garcia was arrested by Los Angeles police officers on suspicion of domestic assault. His DNA was collected and a profile was run through the California database and appeared to be a match for the 1996 slaying, the sheriff’s department said.

The DNA match was confirmed after detectives obtained an oral swab, the department said.

Garcia is being held on $1 million bail and was ordered to return to court Dec. 1 for a preliminary hearing.