DNA leads to charges for truck driver in woman’s 1993 slaying, California officials say
A retired truck driver has been charged in a woman’s death 29 years after her body was found near a California freeway, prosecutors said.
Douglas Thomas, 67, was charged in the killing of Sherri Herrera on June 10, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
Herrera’s body was found on March 30, 1993, in Desert Center on the Interstate 10 on-ramp, the release says. She was a 30-year-old mother of four from Tulare.
Her body was found a few days after she was last seen, officials said.
Before a DNA match connected him to her death, investigators matched Thomas’ DNA to a different killing that happened in 1992 in Titus County, Texas, officials said in the release. He was arrested in Texas in late May.
When the DNA testing connected Thomas to Herrera’s death, investigators from the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Team interviewed the man in Texas before he was charged, according to officials.
Officials said Thomas will be prosecuted in Texas for the 1992 case. Prosecutors then will request that he is extradited to California.
This story was originally published June 13, 2022 at 11:51 AM with the headline "DNA leads to charges for truck driver in woman’s 1993 slaying, California officials say."
