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Using modern DNA technology, authorities have made significant progress on the 1993 murder of Sherri Herrera, a 30-year-old mother whose body was recovered along a freeway onramp in Riverside County.
After advancements in DNA technology, cold-case investigators were able to re-visit the nearly three-decade old murder. According to NBC, after various tests, authorities were able to link DNA found at the scene to Douglas Thomas, a 67-year-old truck driver currently awaiting trial for a separate 1992 murder in Titus County, Texas.
Sherri Herrera, from Tulare, California, left behind 4 children upon her death. Her suspected killer, Douglas Thomas, had been a truck driver for 40 years before he was arrested in Waco, Texas for the 1992 murder of another woman.
Insights into the murder of Sherri Herrera
Upon hearing about the developments in the investigation, the now adult children of the victim shared their thoughts with ABC. The victim’s son, Adrian Herrera, who was just six when his mother died, told the outlet that the news didn’t seem as if it could be true.
He said:
“I don’t know if I really believed it, because it’s like, man, this has been so long.”
He later spoke about the experience of hearing that his mother had been found murdered and stated:
“I remember coming home from school, and my stepmom told us the news what had happened. Me and my sister were there. Obviously, we started bawling our eyes out.”
In the initial investigations, authorities could not understand how Herrera, a woman from Tulare County, was found miles away from her home in the Southern California desert. At a press conference, Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin explained how the case went cold:
“The case was investigated by local authorities, and then relatively soon after that, it went cold. We had no suspects.”
Hestrin explained that since investigators handled the evidence with enough care, modern authorities and forensics experts could build on them using advancements in DNA technology.
He said:
“Investigators in this case did a good job. They collected, processed, packaged and sealed the evidence, and in a box, it went. Our cold-case unit eventually goes back and opens up these old cases and old boxes and starts looking.”
He added:
“Our cold-case unit assisted Texas authorities in their case. The results of that are… that person is also a person of interest in the Riverside County investigation into the murder of Sherri Herrera.”
Douglas Thomas was charged with the murder of Sherri Herrera on 10 June, 2022. He will be tried for it after the conclusion of his current case in Texas.
