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Police Crack Serial Killer Case—but He’s Already Dead

Investigators used new DNA techniques to identify Reuben Smith as the man who raped and killed two women in the 1980s.

California cops used new DNA techniques to identify a suspect in the 1980s rape and murder of two women. But Reuben J. Smith won’t stand trial for the crimes—he killed himself in 1999. Nearly 20 years ago, investigators linked the cold-case deaths of Shannon Rose Lloyd, 23, who was found strangled in 1987, and Renee Cuevas, 27, who was found dead in 1989, both in Orange County. But it wasn't until they used genealogical testing—which allowed them to create a family tree for the killer from the DNA he left behind—that they identified Smith. That’s when they learned that he had died by suicide in 1999, a year after sexually assaulting and trying to kill a third woman in Las Vegas.