Cross country truck driver linked to 1993 Riverside County murder of a woman found on freeway on-ramp
A 71-year-old man already serving a murder sentence in a Texas jail was linked through DNA evidence to the 1993 death of a mother of four from Tulare, California.
The Riverside County District Attorney's Office said Douglas Thomas's DNA recovered from a separate 1992 murder investigation led to a murder charge in the death of 30-year-old Sherri Herrera.
In March 1993, Herrera's body was found on an on-ramp to the I-10 Freeway at Desert Center in Riverside County. Prosecutors said she was last seen alive days before her body was discovered.
Thomas was arrested in 2022 in Texas after DNA evidence linked him to the April 1992 murder of a woman in Titus County, Texas. Thomas worked as a truck driver for more than 40 years and traveled extensively across the United States.
He was convicted in the 1992 case and was sentenced to 40 years to life. Detectives with the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide Team traveled to Texas, interviewed Thomas about Herrera's Riverside County murder, and shortly after, he was charged with murder for her death. Prosecutors also filed a special circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a rape.
The Riverside County DA's Office obtained custody of Thomas in California from Texas, and he was booked at Riverside County Robert Presley Detention Center on Aug. 25, and pled not guilty on Sept. 10
