DNA leads to new charges against man already convicted of murder, CA officials say
A man serving a life sentence for a woman’s murder is facing new charges in another woman’s death from 39 years ago after DNA evidence identified him as a suspect, California officials said.
Christopher Holland, 67, is accused of raping and murdering a San Jose woman, Tara Marowski, in late March 1983, according to a Sept. 23 news release from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office
“We never gave up on Tara Marowski,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in the release.
Holland, who was convicted in the murder of Cynthia Munoz in 2015, was seen leaving a bar in San Jose with Marowski, 21, in late March 1983, the news release said.
“Five days later, on April 2, 1983, Ms. Marowski’s partially clothed body was found in the back seat of her car, parked on a residential street in San Jose,” the news release said. “A possible cause of death is strangulation.”
In 2007, Holland was charged with Munoz’s rape and murder that happened on Aug. 7, 1983, according to officials. While that case was pending, he was also charged with Marowski’s murder, and the “cases were consolidated.”
The two cases, however, were separated in 2015, the district attorney said.
During Munoz’s trial, four other women testified Holland “either sexually assaulted them, or strangled them, or both, throughout the 1980s and 1990s,” the district attorney said.
After Holland was found guilty of Munoz’s murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in March 2015, Marowski’s case went to trial, the district attorney said. However, no evidence from Munoz’s case was included, and the case was dismissed in May 2015.
New charges of rape and murder were brought against Holland after forensic analysis using “probabilistic genotyping” in 2021 concluded Holland’s DNA was on Marowski, the district attorney said.
“If convicted in this case, Holland faces life in prison,” the news release said.
Holland is scheduled to appear in court on Oct. 27, the district attorney said.
San Jose is about 55 miles southeast of San Francisco.
This story was originally published September 23, 2022 at 6:16 PM with the headline "DNA leads to new charges against man already convicted of murder, CA officials say."
