LOS ANGELES — A Southern California teacher has been arrested in connection with the 2005 killing of a woman near Los Angeles after DNA and fingerprint evidence was used to identify him, authorities said.
Pertina Epps, 21, was found strangled on April 26, 2005, under a carport in the city of Gardena, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
The case went cold but was reopened in 2021 when investigators re-examined forensic evidence left at the crime scene using new technology, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
Charles Wright, 56, was identified as a possible suspect and arrested Thursday in Hawthorne, sheriff’s officials said.
He was released after posting bond, the Times reported. Wright is scheduled for an arraignment on June 28.
Detectives do not believe Wright and Epps knew each other, sheriff’s officials said.
Reached by phone Sunday, he denied involvement in the crime. Wright said detectives had found his fingerprints on Epps’ purse, but that could be explained because he had been selling purses, tennis shoes and clothing from the trunk of his car at the time of the slaying. He did not address the DNA allegation but said he had resigned from Inglewood Unified School District to fight the case.
“I didn’t do this,” Wright told the Times. “The thing is, everybody that knows me knows that I used to sell bags and clothes out of my car ... That’s the only possible way it could happen.”
County administrator Erika F. Torres, head of Inglewood Unified, told staff and parents in a letter dated Saturday that the district learned of the accusation the day before, and Wright would no longer be teaching at any of its schools, according to the Times.