Convicted sex offender found guilty in 1994 cold case kidnapping
For release on December 19, 2024
CONTACT:
Henry Kim
Deputy District Attorney
Felony Unit
(408) 792-1099
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Convicted sex offender found guilty in 1994 cold case kidnapping
A jury this week convicted a sex offender for a mall robbery he committed more than three decades ago.
The jury deliberated over two days before convicting Thomas Loguidice, 67, after a week of testimony before the Honorable Hanley Chew. Loguidice will be sentenced on January 15, 2025, in the Hall of Justice in San Jose. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on top of the sentence he is currently serving.
In 2022, the DA’s Cold Case Unit discovered that DNA collected from the 1994 crime scene matched an offender profile in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). That profile belonged to Loguidice, who was in CODIS after being convicted in 2012 of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 13 in San Benito County. Loguidice is currently serving a 40-year sentence for that case in the California Department of Corrections.
District Attorney Jeff Rosen said: "We do not forget. The passage of time does not minimize this defendant’s violent and horrific acts, and he deserves to be held accountable. I am grateful for the terrific work of our Crime Lab, investigators, and prosecutors to bring this perpetrator to justice."
On January 13, 1994, the 21-year-old female victim arrived at the President Tuxedo store in Oakridge Mall, where she worked as the acting manager, shortly before 10:00 a.m. As the victim prepared to open the store, Loguidice entered the showroom area and forced her into the back storage room at knifepoint. There, he placed the victim on the ground, bound her wrists, and tied her to a pipe. After taking a small amount of cash from the register in the showroom, Loguidice returned to the storage area and sexually assaulted the bound and restrained woman before fleeing on foot. The San Jose Police Department exhausted several leads, and the case eventually went cold.
Loguidice was not indicted for the sexual assault because the statute of limitations for that crime expired in 2000.
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