Deepa Bharath
A former security guard serving a 50-year prison term in Michigan was
linked using DNA evidence to the 1988 murder of a 22-year-old
pregnant woman who was raped and stabbed in her Costa Mesa apartment,
officials said.
A judge issued an arrest warrant on Monday for 34-year-old Jason
Michael Balcom, who police say was living in a Costa Mesa motel at
the time and working as a security guard at the Fedco department
store on Harbor Boulevard.
Malinda Gibbons and her husband, Kent, had moved from their
hometown of Ogden, Utah, into the Mediterranean Village apartment
complex on Harbor Boulevard two days before her murder. Kent Gibbons,
an engineer, had landed a job at Western Digital Inc. in Irvine.
The last time he saw his wife was when he left for his new job at
8 a.m. on July 18, 1988. Malinda, pregnant with their child at the
time, was still unpacking boxes. A phone repairman had come to fix
their phone at about 11 a.m.
But when Kent Gibbons returned home at 6 p.m., he found his wife
dead in their bedroom -- clad in a sweatsuit, bound and gagged with
his own neckties. Officials said she had been strangled and stabbed
once in the chest. An examination also showed that Malinda had been
sexually assaulted.
Police said the killer took an inexpensive watch, a calculator and
her wedding ring, possibly as souvenirs. The coroner determined that
she died sometime before noon that day.
On Monday, police said Balcom struck twice after he raped and
killed Malinda.
On July 24, 1988 -- six days after Malinda's death -- Balcom
committed a robbery and sexual assault in Santa Ana, Costa Mesa
Police Lt. John FitzPatrick said. He then moved to Battle Creek,
Mich., in late July and was arrested on Sept. 3, 1988, on suspicion
of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman, FitzPatrick said. He
was convicted of those crimes and handed a 50-year prison sentence,
FitzPatrick said.
Balcom's DNA information was entered into a national database
early this year, said Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Jack Archer, who was
assigned to the case as a detective 16 years ago.
"The Orange County Crime Lab got a preliminary hit and alerted
us," he said.
Archer and other Costa Mesa officers met with Balcom in a Michigan
prison in May and got another DNA sample. This time, the match was
indisputable, he said.
"We matched two DNA samples from the crime scene with his sample,"
Archer said. "On one sample, the match was one in 1 trillion and on
the other one, it was one in 90 billion. That's pretty powerful."
