An Idaho man has been arrested in connection with the shooting death of a woman in California more than 50 years ago, authorities said.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office said DNA evidence led investigators to identify Michael Eugene Mullen, 75, as a suspect in the 1973 death of Nina “Nadine” Fisher. Mullen was arrested Wednesday near Salmon, Idaho, and is being held in jail while awaiting extradition to California.
Mullen’s defense attorney, Dan Brown, did not immediately respond to voice and email messages left for him on Saturday.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that Fischer lived with her husband and young daughter in San Rafael, California, when she was killed in November 1973. Fischer and her husband were both Swedish citizens, and they were preparing to move back to Sweden at the time.
Fisher’s husband found her body when he returned home from work. She had been sexually assaulted and shot three times, and her 2-year-old child was found safe in another room.
According to newspaper reports published after his death, law enforcement officials questioned some witnesses — including people carrying luggage and an appraiser who was present at the house that day — but the investigation yielded no leads and the case went cold.
In 2021, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office referred the case to the California Department of Justice’s Familial Search Program. The program compares DNA from crime scenes to DNA databases in an effort to find relatives of a potential suspect. After several months, the DNA yielded a potential lead, and after three more years of investigation, Mullen was identified as the suspect, the sheriff’s office said.
The Marin County District Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Office, along with the Idaho State Police and the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office, arrested Mullen on suspicion of murder. He is being held at the Lemhi County Jail.