El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office says two Lake Tahoe cold case murders from the 1970s have been solved. 27-year-old Brynn Rainey was killed in 1977; her body was found in a shallow grave near Stateline Stable. 16-year-old Carol Andersen was killed in 1979, her body found on the side of a road. Their murders went unsolved, until the El Dorado Cold Case Task Force employed Parabon Nanolabs to construct a “family tree” from DNA recovered from a blood stain on Rainey’s shirt and recovered from Andersen’s body during her autopsy. This led investigators to three deceased brothers as the potential source. The task force collected DNA from the child of one of the brothers, as well as DNA from a toothbrush. Further DNA testing confirmed Joseph Holt’s DNA is a match to the DNA found on Rainey’s shirt and Andersen’s body, prompting investigators to name Holt the killer. He died in 2014.
