San Pedro man was sentenced Monday to 15 years to life in prison for murdering a pregnant 20-year-old woman and leaving her body on a beach in Palos Verdes Estates in 1980.
Robert Yniguez, a convicted rapist, admitted last month to killing Teresa Broudreaux with a no contest plea to second-degree murder, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
But it took investigators 37 years to make an arrest after the case went cold.
DNA evidence linked him to the crime in 2013 but Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said at the time that they needed more to make a case.
Finally, in late September 2017, Yniguez was arrested.
“Homicide’s Unsolved Unit simply doesn’t give up,” then-L.A. County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said in announcing the arrest.
More than three decades earlier, Broudreaux’s body was found on the shore of Malaga Cove Beach, located in an affluent area of the South Bay.
She was last seen alive the night before, when she had an argument with her husband, Ronnie Fematt, in Wilmington about 10 miles away. She left and then walked to her sister’s home, staying for a brief time there before leaving, McDonnell said.
The following morning, a surfer found her body; she was naked except for a pair of knee socks, according to the Daily Breeze. The newspaper reported she was 5 months pregnant and had suffered a massive head injury.
At the time of her death, Broudreaux was a newlywed and had a 4-year-old daughter. Her husband spoke of his relief when Yniguez was taken into custody two years ago as well as his anguish with how his wife died.
“There was nobody to hear her cry, nobody that heard her screams, nobody that would help her and when she bled out, the baby died,” Fematt said.
Yniguez was convicted of rape in another case two years after the killing.