Sex offender sentenced in 44-year-old cold case killing

A registered sex offender that prosecutors considered a possible serial killer was sentenced to up to 15 years Tuesday in the killing and attempted sexual assault of a woman found 44 years ago.

Charles Sullivan was arrested in 2019 in Arizona after police used DNA evidence to tie him to the 1979 death of Julia Woodward, 21, according to court records.

“Today we’re here to announce justice has been served on behalf of Julia Woodward,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said after court in Reno.

Las Vegas Review-Journal archives show Woodward’s friends dropped her at the airport in San Francisco in February 1979, and she promised to call as soon as she settled into a new home in Reno or South Lake Tahoe. She never called, and her body was found 15 miles north of Reno on March 25, 1979.

Detectives used DNA on her jeans to identify Sullivan, who was convicted in 2007 for the attempted sexual assault of a woman hitchhiking to Yuba City, California.

“All evidence points to (Sullivan) being a serial killer,” lawyers for the attorney general’s office wrote in a motion filed on Nov. 7, 2019.

Woodward’s mother, Cecily O’Connor, wiped away tears as she thanked the offices of the Washoe County Sheriff and attorney general for pursuing the case decades later.

“I always hoped that someone would come up to me with something,” O’Connor said. “But then I sort of stopped thinking about it in a way because there was nothing after the initial investigation.”

Woodward’s case had long been linked to another unsolved murder of a young woman in Reno because of how close the two bodies were found as well as many of the circumstances surrounding their deaths. The remains of Jeannie Smith, 17, were found less than a mile away from Woodward, and both women were found without their underwear and ID, according to court records cited in Review-Journal archives.

Both Woodward and the woman Sullivan attempted to sexually assault were found with zip ties binding their ankles.

Sullivan is suspected of killing Woodward by striking her with a rock, according to an indictment filed in 2019. He pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for jury trial in May.

Court records show three weeks before his trial, Sullivan changed his plea to no contest and was rescheduled for sentencing. He received nearly four years of credit for time already served in jail, and he will be eligible for parole in a little more than a year.

“The world should have been able to see what Julia would do,” Ford said.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.