Horace Van Vaultz

By the summer of 2019, the murders of two young women in Southern California had been cold for more than thirty years. ^[1]

Both had been sexually assaulted and killed in the 1980s — 20‑year‑old mother Selena Keough in Montclair and 22‑year‑old Mary S. Duggan in Burbank. ^[1][2] Prosecutors would later tell jurors that the same man was responsible, and that he was a sexually motivated serial killer: Horace Van Vaultz Jr., a former Bakersfield resident. ^[1][3]

In 2022, a Los Angeles County jury convicted Vaultz of raping and killing both women — a verdict built on a new kind of DNA sleuthing known as investigative genetic genealogy. ^[1] The case became the first criminal prosecution in Los Angeles County to rely on genealogical databases to identify a suspect, a landmark for both forensic science and long‑waiting families. ^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Vaultz now faces life in prison without the possibility of parole, and if a jury so decides in a later phase, he could become eligible for the death penalty. ^[1][2]

1981: A Young Mother Under the Bushes in Montclair

1986: A Body in a Trunk in Burbank

Nearly five years passed before another young woman was found dead under disturbingly controlled circumstances.

On June 9, 1986, 22‑year‑old Mary S. Duggan was discovered in the trunk of her car, which had been left in an empty parking lot outside a closed business in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank. ^[1][2][3]

Prosecutors said Duggan had been bound and sexually assaulted. ^[2] She died from asphyxiation after someone shoved a tissue down her throat. ^[2] Both Duggan and Keough, authorities noted, had been strangled. ^[1]

Again, there was no arrest. Her killing, like Keough’s, faded into the backlog of unsolved homicides. ^[1]

A Third Woman and a Trial With No DNA

By the late 1980s, the name Horace Van Vaultz Jr. had already surfaced in another California homicide.

Prosecutors charged him with the killing of 25‑year‑old Janna Rowe, who had been strangled and left on a trash pile. ^[1][3] In 1988, a jury acquitted him of Rowe’s death — a trial that unfolded before DNA evidence was commonly used in courtrooms. ^[1][3]

Because of that acquittal, the law is clear: Vaultz can never be tried again for Rowe’s killing. ^[1][3]

Years later, prosecutors would say that a re‑examination of evidence showed a DNA link between Vaultz and a third killing in Ventura County, prompting investigators to look statewide for other, similar unsolved murders. ^[1][2][3] Some reporting has described Rowe’s death in connection with Ventura County, placing that case at the center of a legal and forensic tension that cannot be resolved in court because of the earlier not‑guilty verdict. ^[1][3]

The Evidence That Waited for DNA to Catch Up

For the families of Keough and Duggan, the 1980s ended with their loved ones’ cases unresolved. For detectives, the only option was to preserve what they could and hope the science would someday change.

Burbank police Sgt. (later identified as Detective) Aaron Kay would eventually inherit the cold cases. He later said the original investigators had the foresight to preserve key evidence back when “DNA wasn’t even a thing” in 1981 and 1986. ^[6]

By the time Kay was assigned to re‑investigate the files, DNA technology had, as he put it, “caught up.” ^[6] New forensic tools allowed analysts to revisit biological evidence that had sat for decades. ^[1][2]

Kay recalled two moments when his heart pounded: identifying a suspect through the renewed testing, and standing in court to hear the jury’s verdict years later. ^[6]

How Investigative Genetic Genealogy Pointed to a Name

2019: An Arrest in Inglewood and a Box of Photos

In 2019, investigators moved.

A 64‑year‑old man from Bakersfield — Horace Van Vaultz Jr. — was arrested and charged with murdering two young women in Burbank and Montclair in the 1980s. ^[1][2] He was taken into custody in Inglewood in connection with the Keough and Duggan killings. ^[2]

Prosecutors charged him with two counts of murder, adding special‑circumstance allegations that the killings involved multiple murders, were committed during rapes and sodomies, and that he had lain in wait for both victims. ^[2] Those allegations exposed him to a potential death sentence if convicted as charged. ^[2]

Detectives searching his home around the time of his arrest turned up something else: a cache of photographs of women. ^[4] Burbank police said the images could be important clues in the upcoming murder trial. ^[4]

Detective Aaron Kay later explained that he did not know who the women in the photos were. “I don’t know who they are,” he said, adding that his concern was that some could be missing or dead. ^[4]

The discovery reinforced fears that Keough and Duggan might not be the only victims. Detectives publicly confirmed they were looking into whether Vaultz could be linked to other murders across California. ^[2]

Vaultz was expected to be arraigned at the Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles and has remained in jail since his 2019 arrest. ^[1][2][3]

Inside the Trial: Two Starkly Different Stories

When the case finally went before a jury, it became a clash of narratives about sex, violence, and what the DNA truly proved.

Prosecutors argued that Horace Van Vaultz Jr. was a sexually motivated serial killer who raped and murdered two young women decades earlier. ^[1][3] They pointed to the forensic evidence tying him to both crime scenes and the similar ways Keough and Duggan were attacked. ^[1][2]

The defense did not contest that Vaultz’s DNA was present. Instead, attorneys argued that he had consensual sex with the women and that someone else killed them. ^[1][3]

On the stand, Vaultz described himself as a “swinger.” ^[1][3] He told jurors he could not remember ever meeting Keough or Duggan and denied involvement in their deaths. ^[1][3][5]

The courtroom testimony was grueling for families. Keough’s sister, Sabrina Plourde, said later that hearing the details during trial was “heart‑wrenching.” ^[6] She also said she felt “incredibly grateful for everybody that helped us get to this point,” even as she blamed Vaultz not only for her sister’s murder but for their mother’s death from a massive stroke at age 54, five years after Selena was killed. ^[6]

The Verdict: “A Reign of Terror” Ends

The jury of nine men and three women deliberated for about three hours. ^[5]

What Sentencing — and the Future — May Hold

Having been jailed since his 2019 arrest, ^[1][3] Vaultz now awaits sentencing. Prosecutors have said he could face life in prison without the possibility of parole, and if the special circumstances are fully upheld and pursued, he could become eligible for the death penalty. ^[1][2]

Meanwhile, the ripples of the case continue outward. Detectives are still examining whether the same DNA trail, the photographs found in Vaultz’s home, and the re‑examined Ventura County evidence might connect to other unsolved killings across California — even as one key case, the 1988 acquittal in the death of Janna Rowe, can never return to court. ^[1][2][3]

For the families of Selena Keough and Mary Duggan, the convictions offer an answer, if not a complete one, to questions that lingered for more than thirty years — questions that advances in DNA technology and a new kind of genealogical detective work finally helped to resolve. ^[1][2]