Back in 1983, deputies found Dorothy "Toby" Tate shot to death in a van parked off Highway 1 north of Hearst Castle. Nearly four decades later, they have identified the killers, bringing closure to the Tate family.
“It’s enabled me to put a period at the end of the sentence and we can lay Toby to rest, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart," said Priscilla Tate, Toby's youngest sister.
San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Detectives Clinton Cole and Jeffery Robasciotti worked together on the case.
“Back in 2019, due to the fact that there was blood evidence left at the scene that I believed had a very strong chance of belonging to the suspect,” Cole said.
Cole said that blood evidence and genealogy led them to identify Steven Richard Hardy as a suspect, while fingerprints on a Coca-Cola can found at the scene showed Charley Sneed was present as well.
Detective Robasciotti said Sneed had a history of violence.
"He cranked off a round while drunk in the middle of town prior to the homicide, and then shortly after the homicide in 1985, he committed an aggravated kidnapping," Robasciotti said.
Hardy, meanwhile, had transient offenses such as urinating in public.
Both men have since died.
Cole said they believe theft was the motive as Tate’s purse was taken and her Nikon camera was found at a pawn shop in Bakersfield two years later.
The final word came in last week when the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office confirmed the evidence showed sufficient probable cause to prosecute if the two men were still alive. The detectives were then able to call Priscilla and give her the news.
WATCH: How forensic genealogy helped solve the Tate cold case
Priscilla said she and her sister were close, living together in Estes Park, Colorado and both working as waitresses.
“My mother always used to say I was Toby’s baby," Tate said. "She carried me around and I always felt like Toby was my twin soul.”
She said that she’s always remembered Toby by her sense of humor, noting one time when she noticed how big the New York phone book was.
“And she said ‘Oh, toilet paper for my outhouse,’ and when I went up there, sure enough, there was a phone book,” Priscilla said, laughing.
She added that the day before Toby’s murder, her sister talked about how she was going to take her two dogs down to the beach for a run so they could see the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
“When the first detective called me and told me that it was strange that when they examined Toby’s body, she had her shoes and socks on but there was sand between her toes, and I knew that she had that run on that beach,” Priscilla said.
She said that coming to California feels like attending Toby’s funeral, as she feels she can finally lay her sister to rest.
“And today if I get to the murder scene, I want to go down there because I know she loved it," Priscilla said. "And I want to remember all the happy things that she was to me."
