DNA hit leads to Poway man’s arrest in 1987 Carlsbad sexual assault, murder case

More than three decades after a woman was found sexually assaulted and strangled, her body left in ivy on an embankment in Carlsbad’s La Costa neighborhood, police say DNA helped lead them to her suspected killer.

On Friday, police in the coastal North County city announced that they’d arrested a Poway man in the 1987 homicide of 26-year-old Julia Hernandez Santiago.

Police said 54-year-old James Charles Kingery emerged as a slaying suspect after sheriff’s deputies in Poway arrested him in March on suspicion of drug and weapons violations. The felony arrest meant Kingery had to supply a DNA sample.

Two months later, in May, the sheriff’s crime lab notified Carlsbad police that Kingery’s DNA matched samples collected during the homicide investigation 33 years earlier.

“With this information, detectives diligently followed new leads, cross-checked the information and worked with the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office to identify Kingery as a suspect in the 1987 murder of Ms. Santiago,” Carlsbad police said in a news release.

Kingery was booked into custody Wednesday on one count of murder, and as of Friday remained held in San Diego Central jail without bail. Online jail records indicate he is slated to be arraigned July 31. Court closures related to COVID-19 have led to delayed hearings, including arraignments for those in custody.

In October 1987, a local newspaper reported that a passerby had discovered the victim’s partially clothed body on a hillside in the vicinity of Estrella Del Mar Road, near Alga Road and not far east of El Camino Real.

Carlsbad police said Friday that Hernandez had been sexually assaulted and strangled, and investigators had recovered “several key pieces of evidence at the time” but were unable to identify any suspects.