{"id":409863,"date":"2026-07-23T20:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T20:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/409863\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T20:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T20:33:13","slug":"serial-killer-finally-caught-34-years-after-grisly-san-francisco-rape-murder-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/409863\/","title":{"rendered":"Serial killer finally caught 34 years after grisly San Francisco rape, murder mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

A serial killer<\/a> linked to the 1992 cold-case death of a San Francisco woman will finally face justice in California.<\/p>\n

Ricky Dawson, 65, was charged with murder, alongside special circumstances including a 2004 murder conviction in Florida, as well as allegations of rape and sodomy.<\/p>\n

Dawson was serving a life sentence in Colorado for the 1996 sexual assault and murder of a woman in Denver before being extradited to California. The killer, who pleaded not guilty on Monday in San Francisco, has been linked to four murders in four states.<\/p>\n

\"Ricky<\/p>\n

Ricky Dawson, 65, has been linked to four murders in four states. Denver District Attorney’s Office<\/p>\n

In the California case, a woman was found dead May 1992 on the ground of an alley in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nancy Hernandez, 45, was apparently homeless and using a utility corridor as shelter, authorities said.<\/p>\n

An autopsy revealed she was beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled. There were multiple traumatic injuries and the cause of death was strangulation.<\/p>\n

The case went cold for decades until DNA technology revived it. In October 2023, San Francisco police reopened the case<\/a> and allegedly matched collected DNA to Dawson.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A woman was found dead in May 1992 on the ground of an alley in San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Dawson will appear July 30 for a preliminary hearing in the San Francisco case.<\/p>\n

Dawson had pled guilty in 2001 to the second-degree murder and sexual assault of a woman in Panama Beach, Florida, before his extradition to Colorado for the sexual assault and strangulation murder of a Colorado woman, Terri Turachek, in 1996.<\/p>\n

One more case could be awaiting him in Washington state.<\/p>\n

His DNA profile allegedly matches DNA obtained in a 2000 cold case murder of Seattle victim Debbie Cashio, who had multiple blunt force trauma injuries and also died by strangulation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A serial killer linked to the 1992 cold-case death of a San Francisco woman will finally face justice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[164242,551,71500,164241,164240,101,103,102,2531,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-409863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-chinatown-neighborhood","tag-colorado","tag-murder-conviction","tag-nancy-hernandez","tag-ricky-dawson","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sexual-assault","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}