SOLANO COUNTY, Calif. – The Solano County Sheriff’s Office in California announced on Monday that murder charges have been filed in a homicide that occurred more than 42 years ago. The suspect in the case is already incarcerated for a 1975 murder that occurred in Sacramento.
On Friday, deputies booked 76-year-old Herman Lee Hobbs at the Solano County Jail for the 1980 murder of Holly Ann Campiglia, who was 21-years-old at the time of her death. The victim suffered two gunshot wounds to the head and neck. Her body was discovered in a cornfield on Sievers Road in unincorporated Dixon in August of 1980 by two field workers, according to a press release from the sheriff’s office.
The female murder victim was initially listed as Jane Doe and remained unidentified for about 12 years. It was not until 1992 when the Solano County Coroner’s Office was contacted by the National Missing Persons Unit that detectives learned the victim was Campiglia who hailed from New Jersey.
In 2021, the victim’s family requested a review of the cold case homicide. An evidence technician from the sheriff’s office reviewed the case to determine if any of the original evidence could be resubmitted for additional DNA analysis.
Several months later, they received a report from the Serological Research Institute (SERI) that said male DNA was found on multiple pieces of evidence. When that DNA was submitted into another database with the San Mateo Crime Lab, SCSO learned that it belonged to Hobbs.
At that time, Hobbs was serving “a significant prison sentence for a 1975 murder for which he was convicted in 2005 in Sacramento,” the agency noted. As a result, detectives obtained a warrant to collect new DNA from Hobbs for a direct comparison. Their further analysis revealed a match.
Last week investigators obtained an arrest warrant for Hobbs. They were also authorized a removal order by a Solano County Superior Court judge so the inmate could be transferred from a state prison facility to Solano County Jail where he now faces new charges related to the murder of Campiglia, SCSO said in a news release.
The agency said, “Detectives continue to work in collaboration with other Northern California agencies to potentially identify and/or solve additional cases that may be linked to Hobbs.”
The sheriff’s office noted how difficult cold cases are to solve as time gaps lead to a loss in memory and/or witnesses. In their situation, they’ve even lost the original deputy who investigated the case, as Jose “Joe” Cisneros was killed in the line-of-duty in 1985.
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, Deputy Cisneros was shot and killed while investigating a van without license plates parked off a rural county road. Investigation revealed the vehicle had been taken in a carjacking earlier.
The shooting suspect fled but was eventually captured following a pursuit. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life, but committed suicide in 1997 while at Folsom Prison.
When announcing the arrest of Hobbs, the sheriff’s office said that Cisneros’ “hard work is still helping solve cases over 40 years later.”
“We are grateful to the Campiglia family for their patience and assistance,” SCSO also noted, “to the labs whose new technology allowed additional testing of older evidence and to the staff who worked tirelessly to help bring closure to a lifetime of waiting.”
