Larry Christopher Graham was sent to prison for the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s 5-year-old daughter, Angela Bugay, in Antioch, California.
On Nov. 19, 1983, Angela and her younger brother, Chris, left their apartment home and walked to a friend’s house nearby to retrieve rain gear.
When Chris returned home without his sister, their mother, Susan Bugay, reported Angela missing.
A week later, on Nov. 26, 1983, Angela was found dead. Her body was found by search crews buried near the Contra Loma Reservoir, just several miles from her home.
Angela was lying on her side with her pink leotard and blue corduroy pants atop her body.
She was only arrayed in socks and a white necklace with the word “love” on it. Her blond hair was still decorated with a blue ribbon and barrettes.
Her remains were transported to the medical examiner’s office, where pathologist Louis Daugherty confirmed that Angela had been raped and sodomized before she was strangled to death.
Investigators suspected Larry Graham, a former commercial pilot, of the killing, as he lived in the same apartment complex and had a “history of sexual offenses against children.” Graham was also the ex-boyfriend of the victim’s mother, SFGate reported.
After meeting each other at the apartment’s swimming pool in the summer of 1983, Susan and Graham began dating. Three weeks later, Graham asked her to marry him, but she declined his proposal.
Susan testified that “he [Larry Graham] was the only man she was comfortable enough to go willingly with.”
Despite their suspicions, Graham was not arrested, as there wasn’t any evidence linking him to the murder and they had no confession.
The case went unsolved for 13 years until 1996 when investigators obtained a court order to collect a sample of Graham’s blood.
When the results from DNA testing revealed that his DNA matched the semen found on Angela’s body, he was arrested and booked into the county jail, where he was held without bond.
Graham, who was 44 years old at the time of his arrest, was charged with kidnapping, rape, and murder.
Following a three-month trial, in October 2002, a Contra Costa County jury found Graham guilty. His defense attorney argued that his dysfunctional upbringing should exclude him from the death penalty.
According to the East Bay Times, Graham’s mother was an alcoholic, and his father had been convicted of child molestation, but despite that, Graham was sentenced to death in January 2003.
At around 6 p.m. on June 16, 2009, while on death row at San Quentin State Prison, prison guards found Graham, who was 58 at the time, unresponsive in his cell, the Fugitive Watch reported.
About 45 minutes later, Graham was pronounced dead.
His death is being investigated as a suicide.