Accused Cold Case Murderer Pleads Not Guilty

NEWPORT BEACH, CA — James Alan Neal, 72, a Colorado man accused of killing and sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in Newport Beach in 1973 pleaded not guilty Friday to a murder charge, along with charges of sexually assaulting two children in Riverside County.

Neal is charged with murder while in the commission of lewd acts on a child younger than 14 and five felony counts of lewd acts on a child younger than 14, with a sentencing enhancement allegation for multiple victims, and faces up to 82 years to life in prison if convicted as charged.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said he considered pursuing the death penalty for Neal, but legal research showed it was not an option.

"The murder occurred when the death penalty was deemed unlawful here in California," Spitzer told City News Service. "I determined that even if I wanted to pursue the death penalty, it's not available because of the year the murder occurred."

Neal was arrested in Colorado Springs about 6:30 a.m. Feb. 19 in connection with the strangulation death of Linda Ann O'Keefe, whose death made local parents think twice about letting their children outside alone. He was booked into the Orange County Jail Monday, March 11.

O'Keefe disappeared while walking home from summer school on July 6, 1973, and her body was recovered the following morning in a ditch in the Back Bay area. Police said she was last seen standing near a man in a blue or turquoise van, but the case went cold.

In the summer of 2018, 40 years after her death, Newport Beach police shared Linda's story in a 24-hour Twitter campaign. The department shared in-depth details of the last hours of the girl's short life. Police attempted to spur new leads in a four decades old case, but at the apex was the Parabon Labs DNA composite image of Linda's killer.

Chief Jon Lewis attributed Neal's arrest to "the latest in DNA technology."

In January, investigators submitted the DNA collected from the victim to the Family Tree website, and it gave them leads pointing to Neal. From there, police put the defendant under surveillance and collected his DNA and matched it to the evidence obtained from the victim, Spitzer said.

Parabon, a Virginia-based DNA technology company specializing in a process using genetic material, built the composite sketch of the suspect at 25 years old and how the killer might look 40 years later.

Neal moved to Southern California with his family from Chicago, Spitzer said, and was a construction worker at the time of the crime. He moved to Florida soon after the killing, but after an unspecified criminal incident there, he changed his name from James Albert Layton Jr. to Neal, Spitzer said.

City News Service, Patch Editor Ashley Ludwig contributed to this report.