In the 48 Hours episode “Blood in the Sand,” Richard Schlesinger investigates the murders of two teenage girls, Claire Hough and Barbara Nantais. Both were killed on the same Southern California beach (Torrey Pines State Beach) six years apart. One night in 1978, Barbara and her boyfriend Jim went camping there. They set up their sleeping bags on the beach, where in the middle of the night they were attacked. Jim was beaten and seriously injured but survived. Six years later in 1984, 14-year-old Claire was founded murdered at nearly the identical location of where Barbara was killed. (Both girls had one of their breasts cut off.) It wasn’t until 2012 that police got hits on the DNA evidence they had from the crime scene.
DNA on Claire Hough led to two suspects; one of them was Kevin Charles Brown, a criminalist working for the San Diego Police Department. In the lab, his nickname was Kinky because he liked strip clubs, Playboy magazines, and taking pictures of women. He committed suicide in October 2014. His wife Rebecca Brown says he didn’t do it. The other suspect was Ronald Tatro who died in a boating accident in 2011. 48 Hours airs Saturdays at 10pom on CBS.
