A Little Girl Vanished on Her Way to Kindergarten. Decades Later, Her Neighbor Made a Chilling Admission

A man who pleaded guilty last month to the rape, kidnapping and murder of a 5-year-old girl in a 1982 cold case has been sentenced to life in prison.

According to a press release from the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office in California, 72-year-old Robert John Lanoue of Reno, Nev. was sentenced Thursday, March 20, to 25 years to life in prison plus 31 additional years for the rape and murder of 5-year-old Anne Pham of Seaside, Calif. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Pham disappeared while walking to her Kindergarten class at Highland Elementary School on January 21, 1982, the D.A.’s Office said. She was never seen alive again, and her remains were discovered on the since-closed Fort Ord Army base in Monterey.

“Her parents realized when she never made it home after school that she had gone missing. Two days later, her body was discovered,” Lana Nassoura, Monterey County assistant district attorney, told local Monterey affiliate station KSBW 8 last month.

Officials found at the time that she had been sexually assaulted and strangled, per the D.A.’s Office, but investigators did not arrest anyone and Pham’s murder went cold for more than 40 years.

The murder investigation was later reopened in 2020 when the D.A.’s Cold Case Task Force received a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, and police in Seaside submitted items of evidence from the case for DNA testing.

Lanoue, who was in the Army and stationed at Fort Ord at the time of Pham’s death, was identified as a suspect because his pubic hair was found on Pham’s body, the D.A.’s office said.

A local forensics company performed whole-genome sequencing on the hair and searched the DNA against a database, finding that the suspect’s last name was possibly “Lanoue.” Investigators with the Cold Case Task Force found that the most likely match was Robert John Lanoue.

“We obtained a rootless hair that was found on Anne’s remains, and through the use of forensic genetic genealogy, we were able to find DNA linked to Robert Lanoue,” Matthew L’Heureux, Monterey County assistant district attorney told KSBW.

“Lanoue lived on Luzern Street in Seaside, which was 0.1 miles away from the Pham family residence,” the D.A.’s Office wrote of the then-29-year-old Army veteran. “One of Lanoue’s children also attended Highland Elementary School along with Pham, though there is no indication that the families knew each other.”

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An investigator interviewed Lanoue in July 2022, and he admitted to picking Pham up in his car but claimed that he couldn’t remember committing the murder, per the D.A.

He “acknowledged that he may have blocked it out of his memory to protect himself,” the D.A. added. “He admitted that he had a history of sexually assaulting young girls.”

According to Stars and Stripes, Nevada records show that Lanoue is a registered sex offender in his home state for a 1998 conviction for crimes against a minor in Las Vegas. When he was arrested in July 2023, he was already in prison in Nevada’s Washoe County jail, where he was booked for a parole violation, the Associated Press reported.

On Feb. 20, 2025, Lanoue pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping, committing a forcible lewd act on a child under 14, forcible rape and forcible sodomy.

“This case in particular is so difficult to see go unsolved because it was just a young girl, a completely innocent victim on her way to school, and for it to go unsolved for 40 years was a blow to the community,” L’Heureux told KSBW last month.

“We have been in contact with her family, they’ve been made aware of every step of the process in this case, and they have been made aware of the resolution,” Nassoura added to the outlet. “They’re happy to see finality, finality in this case and see that finally justice was served.”

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.