ONE OF THEIR OWN

Claire Hough was nearing her 15th birthday when she traveled from Rhode Island to San Diego to visit her grandparents. She never got to blow out any candles. Somebody killed her first.

Her murder in August of 1984 became one of the county’s most troubling unsolved homicides brutal in its details and frightening in its location: scenic Torrey Pines State Beach, visited by thousands of people annually

The Series

Today: A cold case. A DNA hit. And finally justice. Or was it?

Sunday, Feb. 13: “I must have had sex with her.” Doubts creep in as a detective springs his trap.

Sunday, Feb. 20: “They are not going to get away with this.” A widow’s quest delivers a dramatic courtroom twist.

As the years went by, San Diego police cold-case detectives revisited the slaying from time to time, looking through the files for missed clues and asking criminalists if there was some new way to extract DNA from the evidence.

It turned out there was.

What happened next is the stuff of Hollywood movies, mystery novels and true-crime podcasts at long last an answer to the question of what happened to Claire Hough. A triumph, it seemed, of tenacity and technology

But the DNA results became more complicated than that, and more tragic Story begins on A12.

Cordero Garcia said he had received threats by phone and text for a month about his reporting. He had taken them seriously enough to enroll 10 days before the attack in the Federal

SEE SAFETY • A20

War On Truth

Today, an Opinion special section presents commentaries about the slain journalists in Mexico and displays the photojournalism of Alfonso Margarito Martínez Esquivel, who was killed last month. Inside