Newport Beach Police will use Twitter to tell story of 11-year-old murder victim on 45th anniversary of her death
It was Friday, July 6, 1973.
Linda O’Keefe left her house on Orchid Avenue in Corona del Mar at 8 a.m. to get a ride to summer school. She was last seen walking home from school that day, but she never reached her destination.
Linda’s parents reported her missing and volunteers, family members and police searched for Linda through the night.
Her body was discovered the next morning in a ditch off of Newport Beach’s Back Bay.
It’s been 45 years since Linda’s murder and her killer still hasn’t been found. But on Friday, the anniversary of her death, the Newport Beach Police Department hopes to generate new leads on her case by taking to Twitter to tell her story.
Starting at 7:45 a.m., the time of the first-known records of Linda’s movements that day, the Newport Beach Police Department will begin to “speak” in Linda’s voice on its Twitter account.
Tweets will continue through the last hours of her life, ending around 10:30 a.m. Saturday. The story will end at about the same time of day that the homicide investigation began 45 years ago.
Evidence from the case will be presented throughout the day, and tweets will culminate with a video overview of the case told by the investigating detectives.
“We didn’t want to lose a sense of that this was a real person. Linda was an 11-year-old girl whose life was ended,” Jennifer Manzella, a spokeswoman for the Newport Beach Police Department, said. “Giving her a voice, making sure her story was heard — it wouldn’t be as easy to do through a press release.”
Manzella said Linda’s family members agreed to the social media campaign and are cooperating with police to preserve her voice.
“Hi. I’m Linda O’Keefe (or Linda ANN O’Keefe, if I’m in trouble with my mom),” reads a tweet that will be sent from the NBPD’s Twitter account, @NewportBeachPD, on Friday morning. “Forty-five years ago today, I disappeared from Newport Beach. I was murdered and my body was found in the Back Bay. My killer was never found. Today, I’m going to tell you my story.” #LindasStory.
#LindasStory was inspired by a project of the Manitoba Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which in 2016 told the story — in her own words — of Kerrie Ann Brown, a 15-year-old homicide and sexual assault victim. Their hope was to turn up clues that might help them solve the 30-year-old case.
“It stuck with me because I read her tweets,” Manzella said. “This was an older girl. She was a teenager when she disappeared and it stuck with me, reading that after a number of years. It seemed like that would be a good idea for us to try.”
Though someone confessed to Linda’s murder, the suspect was released after the confession was found to be false. DNA testing years later confirmed the suspect’s saliva did not match the evidence collected in her sexual assault investigation. The case has remained open ever since.
Detectives, on Thursday, would not comment on the case.
Manzella said the Newport Beach Police Department hopes a new tool called the Parabon Snapshot, which uses DNA collected from the investigation to predict a criminal’s appearance, will help identify the young girl’s killer. NBPD plans to release the image between 10 and 10:30 a.m. Saturday on Twitter.
“We just need someone to look at that sketch and say, ‘Hey, I know this guy,’” Manzella said.
Anyone with information about Linda’s case is encouraged to call the Newport Beach Police Department’s cold case tip line at 949-644-3669.