Cops identify suspect in 30-year-old murder
By Brandon Lowrey, Staff Writer
Updated: 03/27/2009 02:27:01 PM PDT


Guadalupe Gonzalez Jimenez, 53, is suspected in the slaying of Lois Hale on Jan. 19, 1980.... photo taken 30 yrs ago(LAPD)«12»

NORTH HOLLYWOOD - It has been 29 years since Lois Mae Hale was left raped, beaten and stabbed to death in the middle of the night for her teenage daughter to find.

The newspaper headline: "Police baffled by slaying of well-liked seamstress."

Years passed, police put the evidence into storage and Hale's family gave up hope of ever finding her killer. The house on Lankershim Boulevard where the 39-year-old's life violently ended was bulldozed into a parking lot. Her two daughters moved away.

And meanwhile advances in crime scene technology made it possible to analyze DNA evidence.

Police on Friday announced for the first time they have a suspect in the cold case: Guadalupe Gonzalez Jimenez, now 53, a machinist and upholsterer with a missing index finger on his right hand who had been deported twice for other crimes.

Jimenez, a native of Mexicali, Baja California, has been convicted of burglary, assault and weapons charges in California and Oregon, police said.

Los Angeles police officers in North Hollywood arrested him for driving under the influence three days after Hale's 1980 murder, but had no evidence to connect him to the crime.

That was the last time police encountered him. His whereabouts are now unknown.

Detectives Thomas Townsend and Timothy Kirkpatrick reopened the case in August 2006.

Townsend said when his current caseload hits a lull, he likes to re-examine old cases. This one in particular caught his eye because of "the sheer brutality of the case," he said. "And just the horror of a 15-year-old girl discovering her mother in the way she did."

In the early hours of Jan. 19, 1980, Hale, a seamstress at a local textile company, was at home with her teenage daughter. Her fianc , Gary Ryane, was out of town on a construction job.

Jimenez did not know Hale, but may have targeted her because she was left alone, said Detective Lt. Alan Hamilton.

Jimenez somehow entered her house in the 6000 block of Lankershim Boulevard - police declined to say how - and attacked Hale. He raped her, then bludgeoned and stabbed her to death before fleeing, police said.

Hale's daughter was not physically harmed, but she discovered her mother's ravaged body.

When detectives re-opened the case, they used new technology and databases to link DNA and fingerprint evidence to Jimenez.

They held a press conference to announce the findings Friday, and invited Hale's two daughters to attend, but both declined. It was too difficult.

Ryane, now 63, came to plead with the public to help find Jimenez.

He paused often to fight tears. He and Hale had lived together for three years and were just months away from their wedding day.

"She was a very petite and beautiful woman with a heart of gold," said Ryane, who still lives in the San Fernando Valley. "This animal came in like a rat in the night and took her. This animal needs to be put away."

He recalled saying goodbye to her for the last time on a Monday morning before his business trip. He lamented that her daughters have had to go on without a mother, her grandchildren without a grandmother. Her fianc without the woman he loved.

"This woman left behind so much love," he said, his voice wavering. "We were gonna grow old together.

"Now I'm the only one getting old."

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