Daly City cold-case killer found guilty

More than 47 years after a 19-year-old woman was found stabbed to death in Daly City, a jury took about one hour Friday, Oct. 27, to deliver a guilty plea for Leon Melvin Seymour in a once-cold case brought to justice by investigators who thought to test an old jacket for DNA.

Seymour, a 77-year-old inmate at Coalinga State Hospital for many other kidnappings and sexual assaults going back to the 1970s, could only participate in the trial for about three hours a day because he is physically disabled. He was housed at the San Mateo Medical Center for the duration of the 17-day trial, according to District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

Family and high school friends of the victim, Denise Lampe, attended the trial and the jury’s reading of the verdict. According to Wagstaffe, the family told prosecutors it was wonderful no one gave up on the investigation.

Lampe’s death was once thought to be part of the “Gypsy Hill” murders, a string of killings on the Peninsula over a five-month period. The cases sat unsolved for years until DNA connected another man, Rodney Halbower, to two of the murders in 2014.  

Investigators broadened their search for Lampe’s killer when they discovered Halbower was in custody at a Nevada jail facing rape and other related charges when the young woman was last seen leaving Serramonte Shopping Center in Daly City April 1, 1976, according to prosecutors. Lampe was returning to her car after a shift at a Macy’s store where she worked and was supposed to meet a friend but never showed up.

Someone passing by Lampe’s car later that evening found her body repeatedly stabbed and inside her vehicle, a 1964-1/2 Mustang, which was parked in the same location at the mall, between the Macy’s store and the Denny’s restaurant.

DNA linked Seymour to one of the five 1976 killings of young women in San Mateo County dubbed the “Gypsy Hill” murders after the road one of the victims was found near. Seymour’s charge is the most recent development in the murder cases since investigators linked the DNA of violent convict Halbower to the murders of Paula Baxter, 17, and Veronica Anne Cascio, 18. He’s believed to have raped the teens before stabbing them in the spring of 1976.

His sentencing is slated for Dec. 1 and he faces seven years to life. Because the case is from 1976, sentencing rules from that time apply and that accounts for the seven years minimum, according to the District Attorney's Office.