Orange County

Killer Linked to 1980s Cold Case Murders of Two OC Women Identified Through DNA Technology

"Because of the advent of science, there's no case that's cold anymore. Every case is potentially solvable," said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer.

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The cold case murders of two Orange County women have been solved using genetic genealogy, officials said.

On May 21, 1986, Shannon Rose Lloyd, 23, was sexually assaulted and strangled to death inside her bedroom in Garden Grove, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office. The case went cold.

Lloyd is remembered as a tomboy who loved horses and had an adventurous soul.

"It's hard for me to fathom how anyone could take another person's life like it was nothing and just discard them," Tom Lloyd, Shannon’s older brother, said.

In 2003, Lloyd's homicide was linked with the 1989 cold case homicide of Renee Cuevas. At 27 years old, her body was found on a road near the El Toro Marine base, authorities said.

Cuevas' cousin, Yolanda Lui, said it was her dimples that she will never forget.

"If I could speak to her -- tell her how sorry I am -- I would make her laugh, so I could see her beautiful dimples," Lui told NBC4.

Detectives refused to give up the search for the killer.

In 2021, the Orange County District Attorney's Investigative Genetic Genealogy team identified a Las Vegas man named Reuben J. Smith as a possible suspect.

Smith, who lived in Orange County in the 1980s, was forced to give his DNA in 1998 after being arrested in Las Vegas for sexual assault and attempting to kill another woman, investigators said.

“The evil in him. I know if I didn’t fight, I was going to die," the surviving victim of the 1998 attack said in a news release. “It was horrible. The things that he did, the things that he said. He told me he was going to kill me.”

Though she was able to fight him off and escape, she said she is still haunted by him.

The DNA evidence from his arrest matched the DNA found at the crime scene of both Lloyd and Cuevas, officials said.

One year later, Smith killed himself at 39 years old.

"We now know Reuben Smith was responsible for the deaths of Shannon Lloyd and Renee Cuevas," Garden Grove Police Chief Amir Elfarra said.

Genetic genealogy has been used to solve some 400 cold cases across the country, according to prosecutors.

"Because of the advent of science, there's no case that's cold anymore. Every case is potentially solvable," said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer. "The loved ones of Renee Cuevas and Shannon Lloyd have the answers to the question they have been asking for more than three decades."

But the victims' families said not all questions have been answered: they know who and where but not why.

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