Charges filed in Cloverdale cold case, suspect appears in court

A murder charge was filed Wednesday against a Glenn County man accused of killing a teenager whose body was discovered in Cloverdale more than four decades ago.

James Unick made his first appearance in Sonoma County Superior Court on Wednesday morning after he was arrested Monday on suspicion of killing Sara Ann Geer, 13, on May 24, 1982.

He sat quietly with his head tilted down and thick, black eyeglass rims blocking his face.

The Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office charged him with one count of murder with an enhancement for committing lewd or lascivious acts on a child and/or kidnapping.

He was assigned an attorney with the Sonoma County Public Defender’s Office on at least a temporary basis while officials comb through discovery to identify any conflicts of interest.

The matter will be revisited July 30 and Judge Laura Passaglia ordered Unick to remain held without bail at the Sonoma County jail.

Geer’s family attended Wednesday’s brief hearing and declined to comment to The Press Democrat.

Unick, a 62-year-old resident of Willows, was identified as a suspect via DNA evidence, according to the Cloverdale Police Department.

Police in 1982 said Geer’s death was Cloverdale’s first homicide to their recollection, according to Press Democrat coverage from that year.

An autopsy showed she’d died from “manual traumatic injuries” from a beating or strangulation.

She was a Washington School seventh grader when her body was found under a fence behind an apartment building between Highway 101 and Main Street in downtown Cloverdale.

Geer was discovered by a Cloverdale City Councilman’s 6-year-old granddaughter, who lived at the apartment and was playing in the backyard.

The granddaughter, Holly Gomes, told The Press Democrat in an email late Wednesday she was with another child when they found Geer.

They were playing when they noticed her legs sticking out from behind the building.

“Being little kids, we thought someone was sleeping back there, or camping,” Gomes said in her email. “It wasn’t until we told his parents and we looked down on her from their second-floor apartment that we realized that she was deceased.”

Investigators said Geer had spent the weekend with friends before being dropped off at home on a Sunday evening. Instead of going inside, she continued downtown and was last seen at a video game arcade on Cloverdale Boulevard.

In 1986, they told reporters it appeared Geer could have been killed two blocks from where she’d been found. They attributed this to her body being found nearby and drag marks in nearby dirt.

About nine men were questioned and, according to the Petaluma Argus-Courier in June 1982, a psychic was called in to assist with the investigation.

The case had gone cold and former Cloverdale Police Chief Jason Ferguson reopened it in July 2021.

The office announced this week it used DNA technology and genealogical methods that find biological relationships between people. Investigators identified a DNA profile from 1982 and it led them to the suspect.

He was living about 120 miles north of Cloverdale.

Officials haven’t released specific details about the killing and the criminal complaint also was short on specifics.

You can reach Staff Writer Colin Atagi at colin.atagi@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @colin_atagi