UNITED STATES
The killer of a woman in 1980 is a killer and child rapist
Thanks to DNA, investigators have discovered that the author of the Holly Ann Campaglia feminicide is already serving a life sentence for other crimes.
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The body was not identified as that of Holly Ann Campaglia until 12 years later.
Solano County Sheriff’s Office
In August 1980, two farm workers found the body of a white woman in a cornfield in Dixon, west of Sacramento, California. She was shot several times in the head and in the neck. She remained unidentified until 1992 when the National Missing Persons Unit determined that it was Holly Ann Campaglia, a 21-year-old woman from New Jersey.
If the victim is known, his killer is not. In 2021, Holly Ann’s family asks investigators if, due to advances in DNA research techniques, there might not be exploitable traces in the evidence of this murder. A lab finds some and soon determines who owns this DNA because it is in the police files.
Another murder in 1975
It is that of Herman Lee Hobbs, 76, who is behind bars, explains CBS. He is serving a 25-year to life sentence for the 2000 rape of a 15-year-old girl in Yuba County, north of Sacramento. He was also convicted in 2005 of another old case: the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl in 1975. She had disappeared on the way to school and her body had only been found a few days later, slain, stabbed 27 times. She had been raped before and after her death. Again, Hobbs received a sentence ranging from 25 years to life.
Herman Lee Hobbs is now known to be the author of three crimes but others are suspected.
Solano County Sheriff’s Office
A possible serial killer
In addition to this third crime now attributed to him, Hobbs is suspected in at least five murders. He was notably accused of killing 29-year-old Brenda Ann Tucker, who disappeared in 1994 from her home in Oroville, still north of Sacramento. Loggers found his skull, with the hole left by a bullet, in 2001 in Yuba County and he could be identified through DNA. Hobbs knew her family and was charged with her murder in 2001, but a judge dismissed the case the following year due to lack of evidence.
The Solano County Sheriff’s Office said it is working with other Northern California agencies to identify other possible Hobbs victims.
This case is the second cold case solved in the county in the space of seven months after therape case which had led to the identification of the murderer of two women in 1980 and 1986.