Suspect released after second arrest for California woman's 1983 murder

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[January 16, 2016]    SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A man arrested for a second time for the sexual assault and murder of a San Francisco teenager found buried on a beach in 1983 has been cleared of all charges.

San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe said the charges against John Joseph Scott were dropped on Thursday and he was released from custody.

"We have now concluded that the evidence does not support that he is the killer of this young woman," Wagstaffe said.

The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office said in a statement after Scott's Nov. 16 arrest in Topock, Arizona, that the case was reopened earlier in 2015 and DNA evidence from the scene matched Scott's.

Scott had long been suspected of murdering 19-year-old Sharon Ray, the statement said. Her partially buried body was discovered by sightseers at Pescadero State Beach, some 45 miles south of San Francisco, on Oct. 30, 1983.

The sheriff's office said Ray had been sexually assaulted and strangled. The statement said Scott, who was 35 at the time, was initially arrested for the murder, but prosecutors dropped the case due to insufficient evidence.

Scott's attorney Brian Getz said he was cleared after undergoing DNA testing. "He feels terrible that an innocent woman, Sharon Ray, was murdered and they haven’t found who did it yet," Getz said.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Tom Brown)

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