By MICHAEL J. TITTINGER Daily Press Staff Writer
NEWPORT BEACH — The former civic leader charged with strangling a woman and dumping her body in a Santa Monica parking lot in 1975, pleaded not guilty to murder charges on Tuesday at the Harbor Justice Center.
John Whitaker Betances is being charged with the murders of two women — 36-year-old Bodil Rasmussen, who was found dead in the parking lot of the old Sea Castle at 1725 Appian Way, and 26-year-old Patricia Ann Carpenter, whose partially nude body was found dumped along the road in Laguna Canyon in 1983.
Betances was ordered to appear for a pre-trial hearing on Oct. 20, more than 30 years after he allegedly took the life of his first victim.
John Whitaker Betances, 57, was arrested in Oregon in 2004 and subsequently extradited to Orange County after DNA samples ultimately linked him to the murders. According to the Orange County District Attorney’s office, Betances was a suspect at the time of Rasmussen’s murder, but there was insufficient evidence to charge him with the crime.
The Santa Monica Police Department had left the unsolved case open for investigation and preserved evidence for more than three decades in the hopes that technology would eventually aid in the apprehension of a suspect.
Betances, who was also known as John Laurence Whitaker, was said to have been living a double life in Pasadena. He reportedly ran for a seat on the Pasadena City College board of trustees in 2001 and was involved in the local school district as a recruiter for a program that trained fathers to volunteer in schools.
On May 3, 2004, sufficient evidence linked Betances to both of the murders. A DNA sample from underneath Carpenter’s fingernails and a semen sample found on Rasmussen led to his arrest. According to police, Betances’ DNA had been in law enforcement databases since 1994, when he was released from a California prison after serving 10 years for rape.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 22, 2006. Read the original PDF.