New DNA analysis cited; an earlier murder charge against Christopher Holland was dropped after a judge separated it from a Campbell murder case that led to his lifetime prison sentence.
SAN JOSE — A man serving a lifetime prison sentence has been charged in the 1983 rape and killing of Tara Marowski, marking the second time he faces prosecution for her death, after authorities said newer DNA analysis methods tie him closer to the crime than when they initially charged him a decade ago and later dropped the case.
When Holland was charged with Marowski’s death for the second time, on Aug. 9, he was being held in the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in Corcoran, according to state prison records. He was transferred to and booked at the Santa Clara County Main Jail on Aug. 25. A bartender who spoke to investigators in 1984 offered a partial identification of a suspect, saying one of the men who left the bar with Marowski resembled Holland, according to the summary.
Prosecutors sought to try Holland for the Marowski and Munoz killings simultaneously, but a judge separated the cases after the Public Defender’s Office argued that the weaker Marowski case would be unfairly strengthened by the Munoz case, which was based in part on semen linked to Holland found on Munoz’s body.