Detectives revisiting 20-year-old Tahoe murders
By Ed Pearce, KOLO-TV
INCLINE VILLAGE — Twenty years ago, a retired couple was murdered in their Incline Village home. The crime remains unsolved, one of Washoe County’s “cold cases.”
But it and others like it are getting new attention. In a small storage room in the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office are shelves containing the files of this department’s unsolved major crimes. Each represents a victim, a family without closure, justice delayed, but not necessarily denied.
You see these cases aren’t sitting on the shelf, gathering dust. They’re getting new attention and that includes the murders of Charles and Nona Rauer.
Sixty-three-year-old Charles Rauer and his 56-year-old wife Nona had moved in their retirement away from the big city crime of southern Florida to the safe quiet of Tahoe’s north shore. “They were retired, living in a condo up in Incline, basically living the dream that they had,” says Washoe County Sheriff’s Detective Josh Palmer..
The dream turned to nightmare one morning in early December of 1994. Their bodies were found in their home in the 800 block of Oriole Way in Incline Village on the foruth. It’s likely they were killed in the morning of the second or third. Cause of death: blunt force trauma.
I’ve been retired from Law Enforcement for over 15 years and, right up to today, I’ve been involved in at least 6 cold cases, all the way from chatting on the phone or visiting the prosecutor’s office, to, in one case, hiking by myself around the hills (while, needless to say, armed), trying to locate a 35 year old crime scene.
The folks who hate the concept that public safety employees might actually be dedicated to their professions, and the public they serve and served, need to move on and get a life. Fox News and the Country Music Awards are entertaining, but not real life.
The victims daughter sues her brother believing him to be the murderer. They settle out of court but no public disclosures.
I presume the police have now checked the sons DNA with the DNA on the believed murder weapon.
Hope the culprit is strung up when they catch him or her.