Cold Case Cops Solve 1978 LA Slaying

LOS ANGELES -- For three decades the unsolved homicide case of Robert Rathbun sat on a shelf in an archives room, awaiting justice with about 9,000 others.

The laid-off engineer was stabbed to death with a butcher knife from his own kitchen by two burglars who then plunged a knife in the back of his 18-year-old son, leaving him for dead. It was May 20, 1978, and without the advent of modern forensics, frustrated detectives soon had to abandon the case with hopes that their future colleagues would have a solution.

After months of interviewing witnesses, poring over old files and using modern forensics, the Los Angeles Police Department's Cold Case Homicide Unit was able to tell the surviving son, Brian Rathbun, who killed his father. It was a young habitual criminal who died in a shootout with police in 1981.

"He was thrilled to hear. He says he definitely feels freer now just getting answers," Detective Rick Jackson told AOL News. "We've been up there and visited him several times. He was surprised that someone cared about it after all this time."

Jackson identified the dead killer as Richard Daniel Bower, who was 20 at the time and lived in Burbank. But work on the case isn't finished. Bower had an accomplice identified only as a white male, and Jackson hopes someone will come forward to identify the other person.

The slaying happened around 1 a.m. when Rathbun and his son were asleep in an apartment they shared. The burglars pried open a bedroom window with a crowbar and confronted Rathbun, who was stabbed with a knife retrieved from his kitchen. Brian Rathbun had been sleeping in the living room and kept his head down during the ordeal as one of the attackers stood over him with the crowbar, Jackson said.

The apartment was ransacked and a few minor items were stolen. Then one of the attackers plunged a knife into Brian Rathbun's back upon leaving.

A neighbor had seen the attackers crawl through the window and called 911, but by the time police arrived the killers had fled. Brian Rathbun was rushed to a hospital, near death.

Fingerprints were collected from the crime scene and the neighbor was able to describe one of the men to a police sketch artist, who drew a composite.

Last October, Jackson and his partner pulled the case off the shelf and ran the fingerprints through a county database that did not exist in 1978.

Prints belonged to seven people and Jackson was able to ascertain alibis for all of them except one -- Richard Bower. But they still had to do further investigation to cement their hunch.

"Just because his fingerprint was there doesn't mean that he did it," Jackson said. "We got old archived photos from Burbank police, which really helped us, plus minute details in other police reports that helped piece together our crime scene, like the type of car, the sound of the car. Witnesses said they heard a very loud, bad muffler on a car that started up."

Jackson visited the neighbor who was the sole witness and showed her an old police mug shot of Bower and asked her if she recognized it. Without hesitation, the woman confirmed that he was the man she saw crawl through the apartment window that fateful morning so long ago.

"The physical resemblance to the composite is amazing," Jackson said.

Bower had done one stint in prison for burglary and had numerous other arrests and run-ins with police. Eight days after the killing, he was arrested on suspicion of burglarizing a business.

"He was pretty violent. He would threaten officers who stopped him. He had a volatile personality," Jackson said.

Then in 1981 he shoplifted from a Redondo Beach, Calif., pier, telling the shop owner he had a gun. Police were called, who stopped Bower's car as he was fleeing. He fired several shots at the police car and officers fired back, shooting Bower in the head, Jackson said.

Anyone with information on this case is asked to call Jackson or his partner, Elizabeth Estupinian, at 213-486-6810.