Man charged with murder in 1973 killing of 11-year-old Newport Beach girl dies in custody

A 73-year-old inmate charged with the abduction and killing of an 11-year-old Corona del Mar girl in 1973 died early Wednesday while awaiting trial.

James Alan Neal was arrested in Colorado last year, with Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer attributing the use of genetic geneology DNA as the key to solving the decades-old mystery of the death of Linda Ann O’Keefe, a killing that shocked the Newport Beach community and stymied generations of detectives.

“It was not if, but when we would find (Linda’s) killer, and when that day finally came in 2019 as a result of advances in investigative genetic genealogy, we thought we were one step closer to justice for Linda and her family,” Spitzer said in a Wednesday statement. “The death of James Neal prior to putting him on trial for Linda’s rape and murder robs the O’Keefe family of the justice they so deserve and deprives the law enforcement officers of the satisfaction that they finally got their culprit.”

Orange County Sheriff’s officials said Neal on May 25 was transferred from the Theo Lacy jail facility to a hospital due to an unspecified illness. He was pronounced dead at the hospital at 5:15 a.m. on Wednesday, sheriff officials said.

Neal was not showing any symptoms of the coronavirus, officials said. His death is not believed to be suspicious, officials said. The OCDA’s office will carry out a formal investigation, as is routine for in-custody jail deaths.

Linda disappeared on July 6, 1973, having last been seen walking home from summer school. She was found the next morning, strangled and left in a ditch in Newport Beach’s Back Bay.

Fallout from the death spread through the community, prompting parents to fear leaving their children outside by themselves. Over the years, hundreds of officers were involved in the case, as a photo of Linda remained hanging in the detective bureau at the Newport Beach Police Department.

In the summer of 2018 an ambitious social media campaign by Newport Beach police, including the telling of the girl’s story via Twitter, brought renewed attention to the abduction and killing.

A DNA sample believed to belong to Linda’s killer was entered into a nationwide law enforcement database in 2001, but for years there were no hits. In January 2019, investigators got a familial hit that pointed them to Neal through the genealogy website Family Tree DNA. Police then got a direct sample of Neal’s DNA during a surveillance operation.

“Linda’s story deeply touched the hearts of our community,” Newport Beach Police Chief Jon Lewis said in a statement on Wednesday. “Through the tireless efforts of generations of our investigators, we hope we have been able to bring a measure of closure to Linda’s family, friends and loved ones.”

At the time of Linda’s killing, Neal was in his mid-20s and living in Orange County under a different name. He moved around the country over the years, spending time in Florida and Riverside County before moving to Colorado.

Records show that Neal was arrested more than a dozen times in California, Florida and Colorado from 1959 to 1974. A 1966 probation report described him as “emotionally immature and psychologically unstable.”

Authorities never outlined a potential motive for the killing, or indicated why Neal was believed to have targeted her. But they have said they do believe Neal acted alone.

After being extradited to California for the murder charge, Neal was also charged with two other alleged sexual assaults that prosecutors say occurred in Riverside County in 1995 and 2002. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Had he been convicted, Neal would have faced up to 82 years to life in prison. The death penalty wasn’t an option in the case, since the killing occurred between capital punishment being found unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court in 1972 and its reinstatement in 1978.