Serial killer finally caught 34 years after grisly San Francisco rape, murder mystery
A serial killer linked to the 1992 cold-case death of a San Francisco woman will finally face justice in California.
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.
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.
Ricky Dawson, 65, has been linked to four murders in four states.Denver District Attorney’s Office
In the California case, a woman was found dead May 1992 on the ground of an alley in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco.
Nancy Hernandez, 45, was apparently homeless and using a utility corridor as shelter, authorities said.
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An autopsy revealed she was beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled. There were multiple traumatic injuries and the cause of death was strangulation.
The case went cold for decades until DNA technology revived it.
In October 2023, San Francisco police reopened the case and allegedly matched collected DNA to Dawson.
A woman was found dead in May 1992 on the ground of an alley in San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood.Getty Images
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Dawson will appear July 30 for a preliminary hearing in the San Francisco case.
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.
One more case could be awaiting him in Washington state.
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.
