Man arrested in 1980 cold case slaying in rural Dixon
A suspect has been arrested in connection with a 1980 killing in rural Dixon, the Solano County Sheriff's Office announced Monday.
In a social media post, officials said Herman Lee Hobbs, 76, was taken into custody Friday in connection with the death of Holly Ann Campiglia, 21, of New Jersey. He was booked into Solano County Jail from Valley State Prison in Chowchilla on suspicion of murder. He is being held, without bail, and on a state prisoner hold.
In August 1980, officials said, two field workers on Sievers Road in rural Dixon discovered a body of a woman in a cornfield. She had been shot multiple times in the head and neck and was subsequently listed as Jane Doe for more than 10 years.
In 1992, the Solano County Coroner's Office was contacted by the National Missing Persons Unit tand the woman was identified as Campiglia. In late 2021, at the request of her family, an evidence technician reviewed the case to determine if any of the original evidence could be resubmitted for additional DNA analysis. Months later, a report from the Serological Research Institute determined that male DNA was found on the evidence, officials said. That DNA was submitted into another database with the San Mateo Crime Lab, and led to Hobbs.
The suspect, convicted in 2005 of a 1975 murder in Sacramento, was serving a sentence at a prison in Chowchilla for the crime. A warrant was obtained for DNA collection from Hobbs for direct comparison, officials continued, and it again came back as a match in the Campiglia murder.
Late last week, an arrest warrant was issued along with an order to transfer Hobbs to jail in connection with the new charges, including an enhancement for the use of a gun.
Detectives continue to work in collaboration with other Northern California agencies to identify and/or solve other cases that may be linked to Hobbs.
“We are grateful to the Campiglia family for their patience and assistance, to the labs whose new technology allowed additional testing of older evidence and to the staff who worked tirelessly to help bring closure to a lifetime of waiting,” officials said.
Hobbs is set to be arraigned at 1:30 p.m. March 13 in Dept. 11 of Solano County Superior Court in Fairfield.
Anyone with information regarding the Campiglia case is asked to call the Solano County Sheriff's Investigations Unit at 784-7050.