The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office has solved a 25-year-old cold case of the murder of a Union City woman by using advanced DNA technology.
The body of 32-year-old Michelle Veal was found outside of Rohnert Park in July of 1996 and the autopsy showed signs of blunt force trauma, skull fractures and a broken neck. Despite a thorough investigation, the case went cold.
"It was a very violent scene," Sonoma County Sheriff’s spokesman Juan Valencia told KCBS Radio. "We're not sure where the crime occurred, where she was murdered, but she was basically a body dump."
A year later a call comes from San Francisco police saying they have arrested a Jack Bokin under similar circumstances. Valencia said detectives looked into Bokin but there was no way to link him to the Veal, besides his parents owning a house in the Sebastopol area.
Flash forward to April of last year, using new technology investigators sent a fingernail for DNA testing.
"There was enough in there to test for one time," he said. "So, basically, if they didn’t get a match there was no DNA that was available."
Testing confirmed a match to Jack Bokin who died in late 2021 while serving a prison term in Vacaville. Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch said closing a cold case brings closure to families.
"It enables us to solve crimes that might otherwise have ended up on a shelf somewhere," she explained.
Ravitch said solving cold cases can also lead to breakthroughs in other cases.
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