Becky Brown had a hunch she was in for a long fight when she filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the City of San Diego in December 2014 — alleging that the San Diego Police Department mishandled a murder investigation that led her husband, a former crime lab worker, to kill himself.
Becky insists her 62-year-old husband, who she describes as “nerdy and socially awkward and didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” is innocent.
“They kept pushing Kevin until he killed himself,” she told PEOPLE not long after his death. “Then they announced, ‘Case closed.’ ”
Any DNA linking her husband to the crime, she contends, came from accidental “cross contamination” during his work at the crime lab.
Media Coverage
Kevin was a sweet, nerdy doofus. Was he also a monster?
San Diego Reader
September 16, 2015
Her husband, Kevin Brown, who had worked as a crime analyst for the San Diego Police Department for 20 years, opened the door. The detectives had questions for him about a homicide in 1984. Rebecca assumed it was a case that her husband had worked on.
Can DNA Evidence Solve a 30-Year-Old Crime?
The Atlantic
October 2015
San Diego police believe they’ve finally cracked the case of a 14-year-old girl murdered in 1984. But what if they’re wrong? Although no sperm had been detected in 1984, new analysis turned up apparent traces of DNA from Brown’s sperm.
BLOOD IN THE SAND
CBS News
April 30, 2016
Two teenaged girls brutally killed on the same California beach six years apart. Thirty years later, DNA on one of the victims leads to two suspects -- one of them worked for police.
"Zero evidence that they'd ever seen each other or met at any time. Zero," said Iredale.
'I'm in This For As Long As I'm Alive,' Says Cold Case Suspect's Widow of Her Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against Police
People
January 1, 2017
Becky Brown had a hunch she was in for a long fight when she filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the City of San Diego in December 2014 — alleging that the San Diego Police Department mishandled a murder investigation that led her husband, a former crime lab worker, to kill himself.
A crime lab analyst killed himself after contamination wrongly made him a suspect in a 30-year-old murder
Washington Post
June 5, 2017
Plaintiffs claim Brown’s DNA was present through an obvious case of cross contamination, likely due to now-outdated standards used in the Lab in the 1980s when swabs were air dried in the open and DNA science was not developed. Plaintiffs point out that it was common practice at that time for Lab employees to use their own semen samples or samples from their coworkers for testing reagents in the Lab and, as a result, several Lab employees believed the positive hit on Brown’s DNA was due to cross contamination.
Who Killed 14-Year-Old Claire Hough, Whose Mutilated Body Was Found on Calif. Beach in 1984?
People
January 8, 2018
For more than 30 years, police sought the killer of 14-year-old Claire Hough, whose mutilated body was found by a homeless man in 1984 on a stretch of Torrey Pines State Beach near San Diego. She had been sexually assaulted.