Suspect arrested in slayings of mom, 3-year-old daughter
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Investigators had a key clue in the 2011 South Carolina killings of a mother and her 3-year-old daughter — a partial palm print in the girl’s blood. But it took six years of advances in crime-solving technology to finally match that print to a suspect in the coldcase killings.
Columbia police flew across the county to arrest Kenneth Canzater Jr. near his home in Perris, California, and charge him with murder, Columbia police Chief Skip Holbrook said Thursday.
Canzater had been a suspect since shortly after the killings. A DNA test put him among several people who could neither be put at the crime scene nor ruled out. Technology from several years ago had him as one of four possible matches among the 200 people investigators were checking out in the killings of 25-year-old Candra Alston and her 3-year-old daughter, Malaysia Boykin, Holbrook said.
The palm print was run through a more sophisticated test in February, and it was a match, Holbrook said.
South Carolina authorities are fighting to extradite Canzater. He has been at a jail in Riverside County since his March 23 arrest. Officials didn’t know if he had a lawyer.
Canzater was living in South Carolina and was friends with Alston when she was killed, Holbrook said.
Authorities said Alston was shot in the head and her daughter was killed with a knife in what Richland County coroner Gary Watts said was one of the most brutal crime scenes he has dealt with in more than 30 years of investigations.
Holbrook wouldn’t speculate on why Alston and her daughter were killed or go into details about the savageness of the slayings.
“Based on the nature of death, it certainly seems to be someone you would characterize as enraged. It was a very serious and gruesome crime scene,” the police chief said.
Nearly a dozen family members listened as Holbrook announced the arrest to reporters. One woman cried “he killed her” several times, while another man as soon as Holbrook finished speaking walked up to an easel where Canzater’s mugshot was placed and threw the blown-up picture to the ground.
Family friend Sharon Williams thanked investigators for never giving up on the case even when the evidence to fully solve it appeared like it would never come.
“This family can sleep well tonight,” she said.