Florida officials arrested a 64-year-old woman in a 20-year-old cold-case murder after the victim’s body was recently identified.
Linda La Roche, a nurse from Cape Coral, was arrested on Nov. 5 and charged late last week with the first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse in the murder of Peggy Lynn Johnson, reported the New York Daily News.
Johnson, who had been homeless and was cognitively impaired, was 23 when she vanished but was never reported missing. She was moved into La Roche’s Illinois home in exchange for nanny and housekeeping services about five years before her body was found in Wisconsin 40 miles away on July 21, 1999, the newspaper reported.
Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling called the young woman’s manner of death “barbaric.”
“All of us here who have investigated the deaths of individuals during the course of our careers have seen many troubling things,” he said during a press conference in Wisconsin on Nov. 8. “However, the utter barbaric brutality inflicted on this young woman is something none of us will ever forget.”
An autopsy revealed the young woman was malnourished and had been hit in the head before she died. She also suffered a broken nose and broken ribs, NY Daily News reported. After two decades of being regarded as a “Jane Doe,” Johnson’s body was identified, which led authorities to La Roche.
Authorities arrested La Roche in Florida and she waived extradition to Wisconsin, Schmaling said.
The two women met at La Roche’s workplace, a Wisconsin hospital in McHenry, Racine County.
According to La Roche’s children, La Roche was abusive to Johnson and had even stabbed her in the head with a pitchfork. Johnson lived with the family for the last five years of her life, the NY Daily News reported.
“We are angered by the senseless and brutal murder of this young woman, and we want justice served,” Schmaling told reporters last week.
