An 80-year-old Stockton man faces the death penalty after being arraigned for two counts of murder in connection with a 1994 cold case, according to San Joaquin County’s district attorney.
Donald Lee Clark is accused of brutally killing two 23-year-old men at a Spanos Park construction site more than 30 years ago.
District Attorney Ron Freitas held a press conference Friday outside San Joaquin County Superior Courthouse in downtown Stockton to announce Clark had been arrested and arraigned in connection with the murders this week.
Clark was booked into the SJ County Jail Tuesday and arraigned in superior court Friday, according to jail records. He is being held without bail.
If convicted, Freitas says Clark faces the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On May 23, 1994, Stockton police officers responded to reports of an assault at a Spanos Park construction site south of Bear Creek High School at around 3 a.m., where they found Lawrence Loehr and Eugene Cates murdered, according to news reports at the time.
Loehr was found inside a security-office trailer bound, gagged and shot in the back of the head, according to The Stockton Record. Cates was found under a damaged chain-link fence that surrounded the trailer, after being run over by a car.
Police said at the time the fence had been knocked down when a car drove through it.
Loehr was working security at the construction site, according to Freitas. Loehr’s close friend, Cates, had finished his shift at a nearby Chevron station on Benjamin Holt Drive and had stopped by the site to visit.
Freitas described Loehr and Cates as criminal justice students at San Joaquin Delta College with aspirations of careers in law enforcement. Both men were also engaged at the time of their deaths and hoped to start families, he said.
“To the families of Eugene and Larry, we know that 32 years is an agonizing, long time to wait for this day,” Freitas said during Friday’s press conference. “Justice may have been delayed, but it was never forgotten. We hope today marks the beginning of the closure you have so long looked for.”
The case was investigated by the Stockton Police Department but remained unsolved for more than three decades despite evidence collection and interviews.
Clark reportedly had no relation to either victim, or the construction site where they died, Freitas said, making it difficult for authorities to identify him as a suspect.
While Freitas said he could not go into great detail, he credited recent technological advances in prompting the San Joaquin County Cold Case task force to revisit the case and ultimately identify Clark as a suspect.
“Through a joint operation of the US Marshals and the Stockton Police Department, the arrest took place,” Freitas said during the press conference. “The result of this case and the solving it only happens because of a true multi-agency partnership.”
Jail records show Clark faces two charges of felony murder and multiple enhancements, including special circumstances for use of a firearm, special circumstances for multiple counts of murder , and special circumstances for use of a deadly weapon.
An enhancement is an additional allegation or prison term that is added to the base term, according to California courts.
The district attorney praised the Stockton Police Department, the San Joaquin County Cold Case Task Force and the California Department of Justice Bureau of Forensic Services for working to solve the case.
Freitas said this is the third cold case the task force has successfully investigated since their inception, and the second arrest they have made in the last month.