Siblings of woman killed in ’72 to attend hearing of accused

PORTLAND – The two brothers and two sisters of a young nurse from Maine who was raped and murdered in California more than three decades ago plan to attend the preliminary hearing for the man linked through DNA evidence to the slaying.

John Puckett is accused of fatally stabbing Diana Sylvester, 22, at her San Francisco apartment on Dec. 22, 1972, months after she moved there following her graduation from nursing school in Boston.

Puckett, now 72, was arrested last month at a trailer in Stockton, Calif., that he shared with his wife and remains in jail pending the hearing.

Authorities said they first interviewed Puckett in connection with the slaying last October but waited to make the arrest in part because of his fragile health. He recently underwent open heart surgery, they said.

The investigation into the decades-old case was renewed when San Francisco police used cold-case grant money from the U.S. Department of Justice to create a DNA profile of the killer. The search for a match led to Puckett, whose information from multiple prior offenses was in a national DNA database.

One of Sylvester’s sisters, Donna Gaylord of Wells, said Puckett’s arrest was welcome news to her family.

“We never forgot our sister,” Gaylord said. “I don’t think in a violent death there is any closure, but there is a sense of relief that I don’t have to wonder if he is out there.”

Sylvester’s body was returned to her parents on Christmas Eve, two days after the slaying. The parents, who lived in Winthrop, have since died, Gaylord said.

Police believe Puckett, a registered sex offender with a long criminal record, followed Sylvester as she walked home from her night shift at the University of California San Francisco hospital and attacked her in her Sunset District apartment.

Sylvester’s body was found raped in her living room after a downstairs neighbor heard noises from her unit.

Puckett was never suspected in the case, police said, and it wasn’t until evidence from the crime scene was entered into a DNA database last year that police got a match.

Puckett’s record dates back to 1954, and he’s been convicted three times for sex crimes in California – a kidnap-rape in Long Beach, a kidnap-sexual assault in San Rafael and sexual assault in San Francisco. He started registering as a sex offender in 1985, when his genetic information was put into the state’s database.

Gaylord praised the police for reopening the case and said she and her siblings will attend Puckett’s preliminary hearing, which she was told could come as early as September.

“We have had a lot of pain for a long time,” she said. “I know that we will all feel better when we know the man who did this is behind bars and held accountable.”