A suspect in a 35-year-old homicide case was booked into Whatcom County Jail on Wednesday, March 1.
Darren O’Neall, 63, was transported to Bellingham from Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla, Oregon, and booked on suspicion of second degree murder, according to a news release from the Bellingham Police Department.
On April 28, 1987, Wendy L. Aughe, 29, of Bellingham, was reported missing after failing to pick up her 8-year-old daughter. Aughe is presumed to be dead and her body was never recovered. Investigators assumed there was a violent conflict after discovering blood in her home and her clothes in the back of her stolen car, according to the news release.
The investigation on Aughe’s murder stalled until 2015, when the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory tested evidence from Aughe’s home that provided probable cause to arrest O’Neall, according to the release.
O’Neall was found guilty of grand theft auto in the Whatcom County Superior Court in 1989 for the theft of Aughe’s car.
