But no one in a busy grocery store on her route saw Anna. No one saw her at school either. It wasn’t until dinnertime that her large family noticed her absence. For two days there was no sign of her. Then, in some bushes by the side of a road less than two miles away, her body was accidentally discovered. She had been sodomized and choked to death. The Coastal Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation never developed a suspect or even a driver — until this year. With a recent determination to look into unsolved cases, a mysterious coat and the help of genetic genealogy — which has been used to solve unsolved cases across the country in recent years — authorities in Monterey County were able to identify Robert J. Lanoue, 70, of Reno, Nev., as a suspect and charged with first-degree murder in Anne’s murder. Robert J. Lanoue, of Reno, Nev., is charged with first-degree murder in the 1982 killing of 5-year-old Anne Pham. Washoe County Sheriff’s Office, via Associated Press He is currently being held in Nevada pending extradition to California, said Jeannine P. Pacioni, the Monterey County District Attorney. Mr. Lanoue was 29 at the time of the Jan. 21, 1982, murder and lived just a block away. He was a staff sergeant at Fort Ord, then an Army base near Seaside. In 1998, Mr. Lanoue was convicted of possession and production of child pornography and lewd act with a child under 16 in Nevada, where he is a registered sex offender. He spent about two decades in prison, Nick Borges, the chief of the Coastal Police Department, said in an interview. Public records do not list a lawyer for Mr. Lanoue, and Matthew L’Heureux, a deputy prosecutor in Monterey County, said he did not know whether Mr. Lanoue had a lawyer. Chief Borges said he was not aware of any prior criminal charges against Mr. Lanou, but added that he was “very concerned.” “I don’t think you wake up one day and think, ‘I’m going to kill a kid, rape a kid, and then go ahead and be a great citizen.’” Chief Borges said. Anne’s family, like so many others, had left Vietnam by boat in the aftermath of the war and ended up in the United States, Chief Borges said. “It was heaven compared to what this family had seen in the Vietnam War,” Chief Borges said of their impression of the U.S. “They never thought that coming here, to this heaven, would be the reason it would pass their daughter.” According to a 1982 article in The Monterey Peninsula Herald, Anne was the first member of her family to be born in the US, in 1976. She was named after a church that sponsored the family, St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Beaumont, Texas. Anne dressed herself and combed her hair herself every morning and loved going to school, The Herald said. Chief Borges came across the cold case in 2009 as he was going through a box filled with material from several unsolved cases. He was “disgusted” by the state of the evidence in Anne’s case and vowed to do something about it, he said. Two years ago, a cold case detective for the district attorney asked him about cases that were “extremely complicated and sensitive,” Chief Borges recalled. “Without hesitation, I said, ‘Annie Pham.’” The case was opened thanks to a single piece of evidence left over from the original investigation – a centimeter-long hair without a root. It was not clear at first whether the hair belonged to a male or a female. Kelly Harkins, the CEO of Astrea Forensics, said in an interview that her lab was able to extract DNA from the hair and sequence it. CeCe Moore, a genealogist, said she was then able to create a “genetic network” in which the same unusual surname – Lanoue – was repeated. “We’re fortunate in this case that the primary surname identified through the genetic network that I was able to create ended up being the suspect’s surname,” he said. A detective discovered that Robert Lanoue was Anne’s neighbor, and further investigation revealed that he was the source of the hair, Chief Borges said, though he declined to elaborate on exactly how authorities had determined that. In March, Chief Borges ordered a large cardboard sign of Anna, which he placed in the lobby of his office. On Thursday, the day the charges were announced, Chief Borges called his team and said, “We’re going to take Annie to school today.” He carefully placed his photo in his car, not wanting to put it in the trunk, since he said that’s probably where Anna was when she was killed. He and a team of detectives went to Highland Elementary School, Anne’s old school. “He didn’t make it to school that day,” Chief Borges said, “but the day this case was filed, the day a suspect was arrested, he did.”
