After spending nearly four decades in prison for the murder of a Santa Ana nanny, Kenneth Clair is asking a judge to exonerate him or order a new trial based on recent DNA tests that failed to find his genetic material on or around the body.
The tests, however, did find DNA belonging to an unknown male and an unknown female, boosting the effort to reverse Clair’s conviction in the 1984 killing of 25-year-old Linda Faye Rodgers.
Clair’s attorneys have been fighting for nearly two decades to free him based primarily on the inability of various DNA tests to place him at the crime scene.
“This is his last shot,” said attorney Michael Mortenson.
The Orange County district attorney’s office did not return two voicemails and an email seeking comment. But prosecutors have contended some blood scrapings on a knife found in the home are genetically consistent with Clair as a source.
The case is scheduled to go before Superior Court Judge Michael J. Cassidy on Friday, Nov. 13.
Rodgers was found bludgeoned, stabbed and strangled in the master bedroom of a Santa Ana house where she worked. Her child, and four others, were sleeping in another room. Clair, then 25 and homeless, had been living in an abandoned house next door. He was arrested days earlier on suspicion of burglarizing the house where Rodgers was staying and was released from jail hours before the killing.
Clair, who has steadfastly denied killing Rodgers, spent years on death row before an appellate court overturned his death sentence. He was resentenced to life without the possibility of parole. A social media campaign went viral — including a petition for a new trial that drew more than 160,000 signatures — turning his case into a cause celebre.
In 2008, prosecutors acknowledged that DNA taken from the victim’s body did not match Clair. And a child who had witnessed the killing told police the attacker was White; Clair is Black.
In 2023, an Orange County judge acknowledged advancements in DNA technology and granted a defense request to test pieces of evidence that could not be DNA tested at the time of the original investigation.
The district attorney’s office did not oppose the request for new testing. Twenty pieces of evidence collected from the crime scene and from Rodgers’ body were analyzed by the county crime lab and DNA experts who previously worked for both prosecutors and defense attorneys.
None of the tested items had Clair’s DNA on it, said Mortenson, who also noted that no physical evidence — including fingerprints or hair — tied Clair to the murder scene.
“This new evidence, in combination with the evidentiary record, exonerates Mr. Clair completely. It proves, unequivocally, that Mr. Clair is actually innocent of the murder of Linda Rodgers,” said Mortenson’s motion for a new trial.
Rodgers’ killing was so brutal and intimate that it is not possible that the attacker could get away without leaving physical and genetic evidence, the motion said.
“DNA was found all over the scene. But none of the DNA was Kenneth Clair’s,” the motion said. “Rather, DNA profiles from unidentified individuals were recovered from Ms. Rodgers’s body and from objects the State asserted were used during the attack.”
DNA from the unidentified individuals was found on a shirt used to strangle Rodgers, the chrome bar used to strike her, and the interior of a glove found near her body. More was found on the fly of Rodgers’ jeans and on a cigarette butt recovered from the waterbed where the killing occurred.
Not all the genetic evidence from the home clears Clair.
Orange County prosecutors contend a chef’s knife turned in by a woman who lived with Rodgers has genetic material — called a partial Y-haplotype — that is consistent with Clair. A December 2025 letter from the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit to the defense team said fewer than one out of 9,750 males would be included.
“We have concluded there is no new, credible and material evidence creating a reasonable likelihood that Mr. Clair did not commit the offenses for which he was convicted,” said the letter.
Mortenson countered that the test used to identify the haplotype is not as discriminating as more extensive DNA tests.
Furthermore, he said the coroner’s report indicated Rodgers was killed by a knife with a 2-inch blade, meaning the much larger chef’s knife could not have been the murder weapon. It was ostensibly found by Rodgers’ employer in a dresser drawer in the bedroom where Rodgers was killed — several days after police had concluded their search of the crime scene.
Mortsenson said Clair may have handled the knife while burglarizing the house days before the killing.
Mortenson accused investigators of pursuing Clair because he is Black, not because the evidence pointed to him, in violation of the California Racial Justice Act.
Rodgers worked for Kai Henriksen and Margaret Hessling. According to the motion, Henriksen had been convicted of voluntary manslaughter in a murder-for-hire plot and, more recently, for battery with a deadly weapon. Henriksen worked as a tow truck driver, and, at the time of Rodgers’ murder, was out on call.
Hessling was under investigation for welfare fraud. Items bearing symbols of white supremacy were found in their home. And, according to one of the witnesses present during the slaying, the killer demanded to know “where are the drugs?”
“Instead of approaching Kai and Margaret with skepticism, the State elevated these White individuals to star witness status, going so far as to delay the prosecution of Margaret to avoid her being impeached at trial. The State then built their case on these shady characters,” said Mortenson’s motion.
Trial prosecutors pointed to the testimony of Clair’s ex-girlfriend, who said he showed her costume jewelry from the home — which the defense has said could have been taken during the earlier burglary.
The girlfriend also wore a wire for police and tried repeatedly to get Clair to admit he killed Rodgers.
At one point, a frustrated Clair responds: “Will you leave that alone, please? You don’t have to rub that in my … soul.”
Although Clair denied the killing during the conversation, prosecutors have said his answers came close to a confession.