Authorities in Santa Cruz County have identified a man who was a person of interest in a 1976 homicide near Aptos Village Park as the suspect in that murder.

The information on the case was provided in a Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office Facebook post Thursday morning.

According to the Sheriff's Office, deputies were dispatched to investigate after a deceased woman was found near Aptos Village Park on May 28, 1976. It was determined the woman was the victim of a homicide and she was later identified as 25-year-old Karen Percifield. While detectives collected forensic evidence at the time of the initial investigation, Richard Sommerhalder was named as a person of interest in the case. 

However, authorities were unable to develop sufficient evidence to connect Sommerhalder to the crime, even after he was arrested for two other murders in Santa Cruz County just a few months later in September of 1976. Sommerhalder served over 8 years in prison for those murders before being paroled and moving out of state. Authorities were never able to develop concrete forensic leads on any other suspects. No arrests were made, and the case went cold. 

Decades later, while re-evaluating the case in 2019, criminalists with the Sheriff's Office located a number evidentiary items to send to the California Department of Justice Bureau of Forensic Services for additional testing. The evidence allowed DOJ to develop a male DNA profile, but the suspect was not found in the DNA database.  

When authorities tried to locate Sommerhalder for additional DNA reference, detectives learned he had died in 1994. However, through genetic genealogy and familial DNA testing, and with the help of DOJ and Othram Laboratories, detectives were able to determine that Sommerhalder was in fact the suspect responsible for Percifield's murder. Even though he was not held accountable for the crime, the Sheriff's Office said they were "proud to give the family of Karen Percifield this bit of closure."

"No matter how much time has passed, we will never stop seeking the truth. Advances in DNA technology continue to provide new opportunities to deliver justice and closure to victims and their families. This case is a powerful example of how those advancements can give us the answers we've been searching for," Santa Cruz County Sheriff Chris Clark was quoted as saying in the post.

"Despite the passage of time and death of the perpetrator, the closure that solving this murder brings to the Percifield family is incredibly important. The Sheriff's Office is to be commended for their diligence and commitment to solving this crime," added Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeff Rosell.

Members of Percifield's family expressed their gratitude for the conclusion of the investigation.   

"It's nice to know this is finally not an open case, even though it was closed in my mind. It just proves that DNA is a good vehicle to solve these things and put things to rest. I was so young then and wasn't equipped to understand everything and I'm just so grateful it's finally over," said Percifield's sister.