BOISE, Idaho — An Idaho man has been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a California woman more than 50 years ago, authorities said.
DNA evidence led investigators to identify Michael Eugene Mullen, 75, as the suspect in the 1973 death of Nina “Nadine” Fischer, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said. Mullen was arrested near Salmon, Idaho, on Wednesday and is being held in jail pending extradition to California.
Mullen’s defense attorney, Dan Brown, did not immediately respond to voice and email messages left for him Saturday.
Fischer was living in San Rafael, Calif., with her husband and young daughter when the 31-year-old was killed in November 1973, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Both Fischer and her husband were Swedish citizens and they were then preparing to move back to Sweden.
Fischer’s husband found her body when he got home from work. She had been sexually assaulted and shot three times, and her 2-year-old child was found unharmed in another room.
Law enforcement officials interviewed some witnesses — including movers and an appraiser who had been at the house that day — but the investigation yielded no leads and the case went cold, according to newspaper articles published after her death.
In 2021, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office referred the case to the California Department of Justice’s Family Search Program. The program compares DNA from crime scenes to a DNA database in an effort to try to find relatives of a potential suspect. After several months, DNA turned up a possible 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 worked with Idaho State Police and the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office to arrest Mullen on suspicion of murder. He is being held in the Lemhi County Jail.