New DNA evidence helped the La Mesa Police Department make an arrest in a homicide case that had been cold for more than three and a half decades.
The case-breaking evidence was gathered in March of this year, 35 years, 3 months and 3 days after police found 43-year-old William Mambro dead in a bedroom in a home on Loren Drive off Severin Drive.
Officers were responding to a possible residential burglary call at the home on December 28, 1983 when they found Mambro.
LMPD’s investigation ended in 1984 with no suspects in custody. Several detectives reviewed Mambro’s case over the decades that followed but no substantial leads ever materialized. Then in 2017 the case was reopened for full review.
Two years later, new DNA evidence, which LMPD did not specify, led investigators to 64-year-old James Boget of San Antonio.
LMPD, with help from the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the San Diego and San Antonio sheriff’s departments, took Boget into custody in Texas on Nov. 17 and charged him with murder.
He was extradited to San Diego earlier this month and is being held on $2 million bail.
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No further details of the case will be released because it’s a pending criminal case still under investigation, LMPD said.
