LANCASTER (CNS) – Two men were charged with murdering, sexually assaulting and abducting a 20-year-old woman as the mother of three worked the night shift at a Palmdale gas station more than 35 years ago.
Terry Moses and Neal Antoine Matthews, both 58, are charged in the Dec. 3, 1978, attack on Leslie Long, who was targeted while working a Sunday night shift at a Chevron gas station on the corner of Palmdale Boulevard and Division Street.
Authorities said earlier that robbers took money from a floor safe before kidnapping Long, whose body was found three days later at the base of a small hill just off the Antelope Valley (14) Freeway at Soledad Canyon Road in Acton, eight miles from the gas station. She had been sexually assaulted and shot.
The murder charge includes the special circumstance allegations of murder during a robbery, murder during a kidnapping and murder during a rape.
DNA evidence ties both men to the killing, according to Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef.
Moses — who is serving a 25-year-to-life sentence at Soledad State Prison for an unrelated crime — is also charged with two other counts of murder stemming from the Aug. 22, 1976, killings of two other people and one count of attempted murder for allegedly trying to kill a man in December 1996, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
The criminal complaint also includes the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders against Moses.
Prosecutors will decide later whether to seek the death penalty against the two, who are scheduled to be arraigned June 16 in a Lancaster courtroom.