Nevada man, 70, charged in cold case murder of five-year-old girl in California in 1982

Anne Pham’s body found near shooting range on former Army base

Robert Lanoue, 70, is accused of murdering Anne Pham, who disappeared while walking to elementary school in Seaside, California, in January 1982 (Washoe County Sheriff’s Office/Seaside Police)

A Nevada man has been charged with the murder of a five-year-old girl in California, who vanished as she walked to school alone more than 40 years ago.

Robert Lanoue, 70, is accused of murdering Anne Pham, who disappeared in the city of Seaside in January 1982, after a DNA breakthrough in the cold case.

Her body was found two days after she went missing near a shooting range on the grounds of the former army base of Fort Ord in Monterey Bay, California.

Officials say that the suspect was a 29-year-old soldier at Fort Ord at the time of her disappearance, and a neighbour of the Pham family.

Pham, who was the youngest of 10 children, normally walked to school with her mother but on the day she vanished had asked to make the trip on her own

Investigators found that she had been sexually assaulted and suffocated by her attacker, but the murder went unsolved for decades.

Police reopened the case in 2020 and submitted evidence for a new type of DNA testing, which identified Lanoue as a suspect.

Officials say that he has already spent more than 20 years behind bars for other sexual assault convictions and was in prison on a parole violation at the time of his arrest.

A warrant was issued for Lanoue’s arrest earlier this month and he is being held in Nevada before he is extradited to California to face the charges.

He has been charged with one count of first-degree murder with special circumstance allegations that he killed the victim while committing a kidnapping and a lewd act on a child under the age of 14.

“She was a five-year-old little girl in this country to start her life, to make her family proud, and to just live the American dream, and that in and of itself is just heartbreaking,” said Seaside Police Chief Nicholas Borges.

“This family fled from Vietnam. They fled from war. The United States of America was paradise for the family. So, never in their wildest dreams did they think coming here and being in this cute little town, even though it was rough back then, would result in losing their little angel.”