Terri Lynn Hollis was 11 years old when she left her family's Torrance, California, home for a bicycle ride on November 23, 1972. She did not return. Fishermen found her body the next day near Pacific Coast Highway in Ventura County. Authorities determined that she had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Investigators preserved biological evidence and continued working the case for decades. A DNA profile developed in 2000 did not produce a match in CODIS, and later familial searches also failed to identify its source. In 2018, a grant supported the use of forensic genetic genealogy, allowing investigators to build family lines from database matches.
The inquiry led to Ronald E. Cole, who had died in 2003. After an exhumation and further laboratory work, investigators obtained a comparison profile and said it matched the preserved evidence. Torrance police publicly announced the identification on September 11, 2019, and closed Terri's homicide investigation.
Cole died before he could be charged or tried. He is therefore described only as the person investigators identified, not as a convicted person or as the subject of a judicial finding, and he is omitted from structured people. The solved status reflects the police department's forensic identification and formal closure. The required canonical ABC report and a direct Torrance Police Foundation account replace the malformed and generic links in the prior record.
Eleven-year-old Terri Lynn Hollis disappeared from Torrance, California, on Thanksgiving Day 1972 and was found killed the next day; investigators identified Ronald E. Cole through DNA and genetic genealogy in 2019, after his death and without a prosecution.
Where did the murder happen?
Torrance, California, United States; recovery site near Oxnard.
