Her Little Dog Jodie Helped Solve Her Cold Case Murder
Decades after an Orange County woman was strangled to death in her apartment, a retired postal worker was convicted of her murder. And the long-awaited resolution could be thanks to a little dog named Jodie, as a dog bite may have been how the killer left behind his DNA.
Patricia Ann Ross, known as “Annie” to her friends, had relocated to La Palma, California, following a tough divorce. She successfully created a new life for herself in the Golden State, forging friendships and co-owning a local plant business.
December 11, 1974, was supposed to be a particularly special day for 30-year-old Annie as well. She’d sold her share in the store and gotten together with the new owners to sign the papers.
That same evening, Annie also planned to go home, get ready, and grab pizza for a double date with her boyfriend, Bob Johnson, as well as her friend Shari Rosen and Shari’s boyfriend, Rod Walthers. Three days later, Annie was going to move to Los Angeles to start a new job at Hughes Aircraft Co.
While the double date was meant to celebrate Annie’s achievement, though, she never actually arrived. After she failed to show up, Shari sent Rod, who was a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, to check on Annie.
He ultimately found Annie dead at her apartment, located at 5600 Orangethorpe Avenue. She didn’t have clothes on and had been strangled.
Police determined that Annie was taking a bath when she was taken from the tub, assaulted, and strangled from behind. Authorities believed the murder took place sometime between 5:15 p.m. and 5:45 p.m.
Blood was also found in the apartment, but the police didn’t think it belonged to Annie. Rather, the DNA seemed to be from her killer. Blood samples were collected despite DNA testing being out of reach at the time.
Additionally, Annie’s little dog, named Jodie, was discovered at the scene. The pup had been left in a dresser drawer and wasn’t harmed.
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“According to the witnesses, the dog was violently barking for a period of about a half-hour, went to muffled barking, and eventually, no barking,” La Palma Police Captain Jim Engen detailed.
“We theorize that’s when this crime was occurring. That’s when our suspect put the dog in the drawer to keep it silent.”
As the investigation into Annie’s murder unfolded, authorities interviewed over 50 people. They spoke to Annie’s ex-husband, her ex-business partner at the plant store, her new boss, and her neighbors. Still, they got nowhere, and her case went unsolved.
It wasn’t until 1996 that the investigation began to heat up. That year, the crime lab developed a genetic profile of an unknown male based on the blood collected from Annie’s apartment. This was a major development, yet there still weren’t any DNA matches in CODIS, the national DNA database.
Then, more than 10 years later, Detective Paul Bracciodeta was brought on to investigate Annie’s cold case. He and Captain Engen joined forces to go back through the original case notes, and eventually, they realized something.
Annie’s upstairs neighbor had been cleared following her murder. However, one of the neighbor’s friends, Larry Stephens, lived close by and would sometimes stay as a guest at the apartment complex. Moreover, the police could place Larry there around the same time Annie was killed.
In the wake of this development, the neighbor reportedly told Larry that investigators wanted to speak with him.
“Larry had replied, ‘I’m not going to talk to the cops,'” Captain Engen recalled.
Larry wound up leaving town, but the police continued poking around. They spoke with Larry’s ex-wife, Frances Jackson.
It came out that Larry had been violent, which is why Frances left him. Annie was tragically assaulted and murdered about seven months after Larry’s split.
He even had an arrest record. Nonetheless, Larry’s DNA had never been added to the national database, leaving investigators in a waiting game that was finally ended due to a California law.
Proposition 69 was active and expanded DNA collection. Essentially, if Larry were charged with a felony, his DNA would be collected.
Captain Engen stated, “It was all about patience at this point,” and in May 2015, all that patience paid off. Larry, who was a 65-year-old retired postal worker at the time, was arrested for domestic violence two months earlier. This led investigators to get a DNA hit in Annie’s case.
Detective Bracciodeta and Captain Engen visited Larry in the Bay Area, where he resided, and Larry began to contradict himself during an interview.
“While we were talking to Larry, our goal was to keep him talking. He gave us some great, great statements. Although he didn’t confess to the crime, he told us enough that he had nothing to do with anybody in that apartment complex. He had no reason to be in that apartment complex,” Captain Engen explained.
Not long afterward, Larry’s story switched, and he admitted to frequenting the apartment complex. He was subsequently arrested, convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life behind bars in 2018.
“Really, the unsung hero in this whole saga could be this little dog Jodie, who was the lone survivor,” Bracciodeta said.
It’s believed that Jodie had bitten Larry on the day of Annie’s murder, which is why he bled and left his DNA behind at the scene.
“It’s my belief that in trying to protect her, the dog probably bit Stephens and punctured, and that’s where we get our drops of blood that 40 years later solve the case,” stated Orange County Prosecutor Larry Yellin.
It may have taken 43 years, but with the police’s diligence and Jodie’s assistance, Annie’s case was finally solved.
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