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REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) --
DNA evidence linked an Oregon prisoner to at least two of the six serial killings of young women that terrified the San Francisco Bay Area and a city in Nevada four decades ago, investigators say. He is suspected of the other slayings.
The San Mateo district attorney's office charged Rodney Halbower, 66, on Thursday with two counts of murder during the course of rape for the deaths of Paula Baxter, 17, and Veronica Anne Cascio, 18.
Their deaths were among six police say are connected and occurred between January and April 1976 in California and Nevada. Five of the bodies were found in the suburbs immediately south of San Francisco, including one near Gypsy Hill Road, giving the killings their nickname. A sixth body was found in Reno.
DNA evidence linking Halbower to both killings was found on Baxter and Cascio, San Mateo Chief Deputy District Attorney Karen Guidotti said.
"Based on the forensic links between a number of the cases, the time frame of the murders, and the methods used by the offender to commit these crimes, investigators are confident all the crimes were committed by the same offender," The FBI said in a statement in March after a Gypsy Hill Task Force was created to revisit the cold case using DNA technology.
Halbower denied involvement in any of the killings in a jailhouse interview with a local television station.
"I'm confused, and I want some answers," he told KGO-TV, "I don't know anything. No knowledge about this."
Halbower submitted a DNA sample when he was transferred from a Nevada prison to Oregon State Prison in November 2013. At the time, Halbower was being paroled in Nevada after serving a sentence for the 1975 rape of a blackjack dealer, which occurred two months before the body of University of Nevada-Reno student Michelle Mitchell, 19, was found.
He escaped from the Nevada prison in 1986 and committed a string of violent crimes in Oregon before he was recaptured. He was serving a sentence in Oregon for attempted murder, assault and robbery when he was extradited to Redwood City and charged with the two murders.
A woman who was convicted in 1980 of killing Mitchell and spent more than 30 years in a Nevada prison was granted a new trial that is scheduled for July and ordered released on her own recognizance in September.
The public defender for Cathy Woods, 64, presented evidence that the DNA on a cigarette butt in the garage where Mitchell's body was found matches that of Halbower.
He is scheduled to enter a plea in Redwood City on Monday.
The brother of one of the Gypsy Hill victims traveled 90 miles from Modesto to attend Halbower's court hearing Thursday. John Blackwell, 56, is the older brother of Tanya Blackwell, the 14-year-old girl whose body was found near the road that gave the killings their name.
He told reporters he attended the hearing to show solidarity with other victims' families, even though Halbower hasn't been charged in his sister's death.
"I feel happy for the families, and I feel some closure," he said. "Some closure is better than no closure."
By MARI YAMAGUCHI and ELAINE KURTENBACH
Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) --
Prayers were offered Friday at Tokyo's largest mosque for two Japanese hostages threatened with beheading by Islamic militants who had demanded a $200 million ransom for their release.
Militants affiliated with the Islamic State group posted an online warning that the "countdown has begun" for the extremists to kill 47-year-old Kenji Goto and 42-year-old Haruna Yukawa. The extremists gave Prime Minister Shinzo Abe 72 hours to pay the ransom, and the deadline expired Friday.
The posting, which appeared on a forum popular among Islamic State militants and sympathizers, did not show any images of the hostages, who are believed to be held somewhere in Syria.
The status of efforts to free the men was unclear. Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga was asked about the latest message and said Japan was analyzing it.
"The situation remains severe, but we are doing everything we can to win the release of the two Japanese hostages," Suga said. He said Japan is using every channel it can find, including local tribal chiefs, to try to reach the captors.
He said there has been no direct contact with the captors.
Abe met with his National Security Council on the crisis.
SADIE GURMAN, Associated Press
DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) —
Theater shooting defendant James Holmes sat quietly and leaned back in his chair in court on Tuesday just hours before the start of the arduous process of choosing a jury to decide whether he was sane when he opened fire in a packed Colorado movie theater.
It was the first time Holmes has been seen by the public in civilian clothes since the 2012 shooting. He had no visible restraints, though the judge had ordered him to be tethered to the floor in a way the public couldn't see for the trial.
His dark hair was neatly trimmed, and he had a medium-length curly beard and wore oval-shaped reddish glasses.
His appearance was in contrast to earlier court hearings where he wore jail uniforms and occasionally had wild orange hair and wide eyes.
An unprecedented jury pool of 9,000 people was initially summoned but later fell to 7,000 after some summons could not be delivered and some people were excused.
The pool will be winnowed to a handful in the weeks ahead to hear the death penalty trial that could last until October.
Jury selection was set to begin later in the day with the first group of several hundred people filling out questionnaires.