Which Wolf Killed Little Red Riding Hood Arpana Jinaga?

Arpana Jinaga was talented, well-liked, a brilliant student and a dynamic girl. Arpana excelled in her studies and earned accolades from her mentors. 

She grew up in Hyderabad, India, and was the eldest daughter of Nirmala and Dr B C Jinaga, who was the head of the School of Information Technology at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University. Arpana's sister, Pavitra, was pursuing her engineering second year from Naiduamma Engineering College.

Arpana has an early interest in art, writing, and gymnastics, but she showed remarkable aptitude for technology. She also was very active. She practiced taekwondo, learned to build her own motorcycle, joined a motorcycle group called the Pacific Northwest Riders, volunteered at the Redmond Fire Department and animal shelters, and even had aspirations of opening an animal sanctuary for endangered species. She was the type of person you’d want to get to know and hang out with.

Arpana completed her intermediate studies at Nalanda Junior College, KPHB Colony, and pursued her engineering degree at VNR Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Bachupally.

She was recognized as one of the top 20 winners in the Digital Signal Controller Design contest, which was held internationally by Microchip Technologies Inc., an Arizona-based company. Which she was highlighted for by The New Indian Express in June 2005 in a column titled "Young Inventors" where she had said she had plans to become a professor.

Arpana had left for the US in 2005 after completing her engineering. She received a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Rutgers University in New Jersey in October of 2007. After graduation she was offered a job at EMC, a Bellevue, Washington software-development company, and according to her supervisor Muhammad Ali she became a "shooting star".

Initially, Arpana lived with friends in an apartment before relocating to her own place at Valley View Apartments on the 8900 block of Redmond-Woodinville Road in Redmond, Washington. She had been living there for six months when on the evening of Friday, October 31, 2008, the 24-year-old, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, co-hosted a Halloween party with four other tenants in their apartments. The building was motel-style, so everyone’s front door faced the outside of the building. There was food and snack tables set up outside the units. At any given time 40 or 50 people mostly residents and their friends and family were moving through the complex. Over a dozen people visited Arpana's apartment that evening. The majority of the guests departed after 9pm to continue the gathering at a different apartment.

Partygoers reported that Arpana got into a verbal altercation with a male, who made a race-related comment. Around 1am, Emanuel Fair who was dressed as a construction worker, visited her apartment to eat pizza. He had been in her apartment once earlier in the night too. Fair was staying in the apartment of Leslie Potts. Potts had met Fair on Myspace and had not known him for a long time.

Cameron Johnson, a neighbor of Arpana, arrived late at the party in Arpana's apartment. He was intoxicated and came with several bottles of liquor. Residents of the apartment noted that Johnson seemed to take an interest in Arpana.

At approximately 2:30 am, Fair and Johnson proceeded to Johnson's apartment, and subsequently to Johnson's car to listen to music. This event marks the final sighting of the duo by an independent witness.

At around 3 am, the party was mostly over, and Arpana was spotted talking with a tall man with olive skin as she stood in her third-floor apartment’s doorway. The description of the man matched Johnson's appearance.

During the night, neighbors of Arpana's heard muffled moaning sounds, and assumed she and a partner were having consensual sex.

Around 8 a.m., Arpana's neighbor, Kyle Rose, was roused by noises emanating from her apartment. He described hearing "a horrible growling" lasting about twenty seconds before a thud was heard. Once the noise ceased, Rose noticed the sound of footsteps followed by running water for an hour.

Arpana was in regular contact with her parents, and the last time they heard from her was the day before Halloween; she did not respond to their phone calls. Deeply worried, on Monday, November 3rd, Arpana's father called family friend, Jay Bodicherla to check on her. Bodicherla went to the apartment complex, where he encountered Cameron Johnson, who showed him the way to Arpana's unit.

When the two approached her locked door, they knocked, and it swung right open. They realized that the door had been kicked in. It was splintered at the jam, and the lock was broken.  When they got inside the apartment was in disarray. When they got to Arpana's bedroom, they found her nude body on the floor face-down on the carpet next to the foot of her bed and partially covered with a sheet. They didn’t approach her or check to see if she was alive; they ran outside and called 911.  

When the medics arrived, it was determined that Arpana died from strangulation from a bootlace which was later found in the trash bin of the apartment complex, along with a bag containing Arpana's Halloween costume, her bloodied robe and a discarded bottle of motor oil. Arpana had been gagged with her underwear and duct tape and had been brutally beaten around the head breaking her teeth. It had appeared that she had put up a fight. Her hands were covered in blue toilet-bowl cleaner, and her finger and fingernails were scrubbed. The rest of her body and other items were covered in motor oil. Her bed had been stripped, a fleece blanket as well as her arm was partially burned, and her comforter was found soaked in the bathroom bathtub. In the apartment, there was a strong smell of bleach, and also bleach stains were found everywhere.

The medical examiner determined that Arpana was killed sometime between 3:30 and 8 a.m. on November 1st as a result of asphyxia due to ligature strangulation. She also had blunt-force trauma injuries to her battered body, and she was sexually assaulted.

It was later determined that there were items missing from the crime scene, including at least one of Arpana's ID cards, her Blackberry, and her digital camera; none of which would ever be recovered. Investigators later retrieve the cell phone's information from Arpana's provider.

Police found DNA evidence several people at Arpana's apartment. DNA from Aaron Gurtler’s semen was on a towel near Arpana’s body and was mixed with Arpana’s blood on a sheet covering her body even though he had not been to her apartment in several weeks, and she kept her apartment “very, very tidy.” Gurtler was a member of the Pacific Northwest Riders group. Two members of the group had a history of sexual crimes, and one had been sexually harassing Arpana.

Unknown male DNA was discovered on Arpana's wrist. The donor of this DNA was never discovered. Id. Unknown DNA from multiple males was found on duct tape, the string of a tampon near Arpana’s body, and her underwear which appeared to have been used as a gag

The first primary suspect was Arpana's neighbor Cameron Johnson. His DNA was on the bottle of motor oil. There were two calls made from Johnson's phone Arpana's phone around 3:00 a.m. the morning she was killed. 

At about 10 a.m., on the day that Arpana was killed Johnson printed out directions to a pawn shop and drove from Redmond to the Canadian border. At the border, he tried to “blow through” without stopping. The customs guards searched his car and refused him entry to Canada.

When Johnson was interviewed by police on November 3rd and 5th, he was noticeably limping with elbow and knee issues, but claimed it was due to an arm-wrestling incident. Johnson repeatedly told the police he had no memory of the evening. He asked others whether he might have killed Arpana and not remembered or did it in his sleep. Johnson admitted to police that he attended the Halloween party and admitted that he was sexually attracted to Arpana and wanted to "hook up" with her that night. He claimed that did not happen. He said he went to bed in his own apartment, alone, sometime after midnight and awoke around 3:00 a.m. to "moaning" originating from Arpana's apartment. Johnson said that he soon fell back asleep and stayed in bed until around 10:00 a.m. He said he did not remember calling Arpana in the middle of the night. When police confronted him with his phone’s call log, Johnson said, “oh crap.” Before the police got a search warrant for Johnson’s phone, he deleted his phone’s call logs and text messages. He also claimed that he could not explain why his DNA was on the bottle of motor oil.

The next suspect was Emanual Fair aka Anthony P. Parker. Fair who had weapon and drug offenses as a juvenile. In 2004 Fair was charged with the rape of a15-year-old victim. Fair had raped her numerous times, but this culminated in a final incident where fair choked the teenage girl at gunpoint. He was arrested for this crime and ended up pleading down from 2nd degree to 3rd-degree rape. Fair would begin serving out his four-year sentence in 2004 but was released by the end of 2006, serving less than three years and being labeled a "level one" offender.

Fair said that after the party ended around 1:00 a.m., he returned to Pott's apartment and went to sleep. Fair's phone records showed various calls to three women between 2:00 and 5:00 a.m. After the Halloween party, Fair spent several more days at the apartment complex and helped people clean up from the party. Fair’s DNA was found on the shoulders of Arpana's bathrobe, a tissue with faint blood stains, a mixed sample of DNA on the end of a piece of duct tape that may have been used as a gag during the incident, and on her neck.

On October 29th, 2010, Fair was charged with first degree murder on. The information alleged that the murder was premeditated and committed during the course of a burglary and rape. A special allegation of sexual motivation was also included. No charges were filed against Johnson.

Fair was held in jail for nine years before going to trial in February 2017. He spent most of that time in solitary confinement.

During the trial the defense surmised that when Fair used a tissue from Arpana's apartment after he got a bloody lip after he was hit accidently hit during the party, he likely used her bathroom where her robe hung. They also suggested that he may have touched the duct tape holding decorations during the party. Also, there were photographs that showed he touched Arpana and others while posing during the party.

Johnson, testified as witness for the defense and answered a limited set of questions after invoking his privilege against self-incrimination. He told jurors that he was interviewed by detectives four times and received immunity for two of those interviews; that he was not granted immunity for his trial testimony; and that he was never arrested, charged, or prosecuted in connection with Arpana's death.

The jury deliberated for eight working days before the court
declared a mistrial.

On June 11th, 2019, the jury in Fair’s second trial acquitted him after deciding law enforcement and prosecutors’ case wasn’t strong enough for a murder conviction.

Arpana's case remains unsolved.