Convicted sexual predator found guilty in 1976 Daly City cold case murder
DALY CITY – A man imprisoned for kidnappings and sexual assaults dating back to the 1970s has been found guilty of a murder in Daly City that was unsolved for decades, prosecutors said.
San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe's office announced that a jury convicted 77-year-old Leon Melvin Seymour in the 1976 killing of 21-year-old Denise Lempe. The verdict was read in court Friday, following three hours of deliberations the previous day.
On April 1, 1976, Lempe had left work at Macy's at the Serramonte Center mall to meet a friend but she never showed up. A passerby found the victim stabbed multiple times inside her vehicle.
The case was unsolved for nearly four decades until the sheriff's forensic laboratory reexamined evidence to check for DNA on another suspect. A blood stain on the Lempe's jacket was tied to Seymour, prosecutors said.
Seymour was arrested in 2017 after being found in a state hospital where he was housed as a sexually violent predator for what prosecutors said were "many other kidnappings and sexual assaults" going back to the 1970s.
Lempe's killing had been considered one of the "Gypsy Hill Murders", a series of unsolved homicides of young women and girls on the Peninsula in 1976, named after a road in Pacifica where one of the victims was found.
Rodney Halbower was arrested in connection with two of the six Gypsy Hill homicides in 2015, as he was serving time in an Oregon state prison for an unrelated attempted murder conviction.
Authorities at the time did not say if there were any connections between the two men.
During Seymour's trial, the defendant was held at the San Mateo County Medical Center and proceedings were held in three-hour daily sessions due to his disability, according to the DA's office.
Prosecutors said the case was continued to December 1 for receipt of the pre-sentence report and sentencing.
