Free Republic

A new "cold case" unit that investigates unsolved homicides in Santa Clara County has already resulted in murder charges being filed in three old cases, prosecutors announced Friday at a news conference. Chief Assistant District Attorney Karyn Sinunu said she decided to form a dedicated two-person unit in the District Attorney's Office earlier this year after two high-profile cold case murders were solved by local authorities. "After the Xiana Fairchild case and the Jeanine Harms case, I decided to form a cold case unit so we could assist our local law enforcement in solving old homicides," Sinunu said. Sinunu announced...

Ultimately, Jeanine Harms' hobby led investigators to charge Maurice Nasmeh with her murder. The forensic investigation was the stuff of TV's ``CSI,'' unfolding in real time, over 17 long months. Tiny yarn fragments from her hooked rug project, painstakingly collected from a carpet that investigators believed was used in disposing her body, were found to match yarn in Harms' home and fibers in the cargo area of Nasmeh's SUV.Mark Moriyama, a criminalist with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Crime Laboratory, extracted thousands of fibers from the carpet by pressing 4-inch-square pieces of tape across its entire surface, and then...

Los Gatos police have made an arrest in the case of a woman who has been missing for three years after she was last seen at a Campbell brew pub. Police say they arrested Maurice Nasmeh in San Jose at 8:45 a.m. this morning. He's the same man who police question three years ago regarding the disappearance of Janine Harms. Harms was last seen with him at the Rock Bottom Brewery in Campbell in 2001. When she failed to show up for work the following Monday, friends and family became concerned. She hasn't been seen since. It was not immediately...