Gay Tech CEO Charged in 30-Year-Old Murder
Twice he was tried, and twice, a jury failed to convict John Kevin Woodward for killing his roommate’s girlfriend, a computer engineer and athlete found strangled in her car in Mountain View, Calif., in the early 1990s.Now, prosecutors have charged the gay tech CEO with murder for the third time in connection with a killing that happened 30 years ago after they say new developments in forensic science technology link him to the murder weapon.Police arrested Woodward, Readytech’s president and chief executive officer, at JFK International Airport in New York Saturday after he arrived from Amsterdam, according to a Santa Clara County District Attorney’s news release.He is charged with murdering 25-year-old Laurie Houts.Authorities say Woodward waived extradition, so Mountain View police have until July 29 to escort him back to Santa Clara County, where he’ll be formally booked and arraigned.Houts was found strangled in her car about a mile from her job by a passerby on Sept.
5, 1992. A rope was still wrapped around her neck.“Her footprints were on the windshield interior, a sign of her struggle with Woodward.
Her unrifled pocketbook was nearby,” the news release states.Woodward, prosecutors say, had developed unrequited feelings for Houts’ boyfriend, his roommate, and was “openly jealous” of her.
Woodward did not have an alibi, and when asked about Houts’ death by the boyfriend, he asked about what the investigators knew about him.Despite finding Woodward’s fingerprints outside Houts’ car, investigators could not prove that he was inside.As a result of the death in the late 1990s, Woodward was tried twice, but the case was dismissed.
