Success Stories
- California: Client charged with Disorderly Conduct and Obstruction of justice after being beaten by police – CASE DISMISSED
- Indiana: Client charged with felony theft charge for allegedly stealing from a department store – CHARGES DROPPED
- Virginia: Client charged with being an accessory to shoplifting on a US military base – CHARGES DISMISSED
- Florida: 14 year-old client accused of molesting his 4 year-old adopted sister – CHARGES DISMISSED
Voluntary DNA sample leads to link in cold case
In trying to help Police investigators link his brother to a 1983 rape and murder case of a Campbell teen, David Pearman voluntarily submitted a DNA sample. However, detectives quickly changed their focus when Pearman’s DNA sample connected him to a crime unrelated to his brother’s; Pearman’s DNA sample connected him to the rape of an 81 year-old woman from San Jose.
Currently, both brothers face charges that could sentence them to life in prison. The brothers reside in Santa Clara County men’s jail, without the option of bail. David Tomkins, an Assistant District Attorney, says that authorities were “lucky” to have embarked on this chain of events that led to the identification of Pearman as a suspect in the case of an elderly woman being raped in 2001, unrelated to the crime to which his brother is a suspect.
46 year-old David Pearman, a.k.a. David Leonard Holland, was taken into custody and arraigned on charges related to the 2001 rape case. Pearman also has a prior felony record for Burglary. Police investigators are claiming that the voluntary DNA sample that he contributed matches that of a sample taken from the scene of the crime of the 2001 rape of an 81 year-old woman. If it weren’t for the investigation into his 53 year-old brother on an unrelated case, Police would likely have never been able to link evidence from the 2001 crime scene to Pearman. According to Tomkins, Pearman would have gotten away with this crime if authorities in the “cold case” division hadn’t been investigating Christopher Melvin Holland (Pearman’s brother) in connection with the murder of a 17 year-old.
The murdered 17 year-old, Cynthia Munoz, was found partially naked and stabbed to death in her Campbell home more than 24 years ago. During those 24 years that passed, Police had leads in the case but lacked sufficient evidence to bring charges against a potential suspect. However, earlier this year investigator Michael Schembri began to focus on the Munoz murder and found out that a friend of Christopher Holland bragged that he and Holland raped and murdered the 17 year-old girl in the course of a robbery for narcotics. Just as Schembri was looking further into Holland’s involvement, he was nowhere to be found. When authorities realized that they had a semen sample from the Munoz rape/murder, they located Holland’s two brothers and asked them to give DNA samples in hopes of finding a link.
The sample from David Pearman’s brother Kenneth Holland was enough to charge Christopher Holland in Munoz’s murder, showing a link close enough to determine that it is “possible but highly improbable” that anyone but one of the Holland’s committed the crime. This provided ample evidence to put out a warrant for Christopher Holland’s arrest; Holland was arrested after police received a tip that he was hiding out in a San Jose apartment.
Although police had all the evidence they needed from Kenneth Holland’s DNA sample, David Pearman’s DNA sample revealed some surprises. While Pearman and Christopher Holland are only half-brothers, making Pearman’s sample useless in the Munoz case, the procedure of entering his sample into a computer database alerted authorities to its match with the evidence taken in the 2001 rape case of the elderly woman.
Authorities now believe that they have enough evidence to charge Pearman with Burglary, Rape, and Forcible Oral Copulation. This case would have never been solved if it weren’t for the voluntary DNA sample provided in an unrelated case in which his half-brother was the prime suspect.