More than three decades after Laurie Houts was strangled in her car on Crittenden Lane in Mountain View, the man charged with her killing is neither free nor on trial. John Kevin Woodward, now facing a third murder prosecution over the September 1992 death, remains under monitored home detention in Modesto while a federal judge decides a question that could end the case for good: whether a 1996 dismissal of charges against him legally amounted to an acquittal.
Houts, a UC Davis-educated computer engineer who worked at Adobe Systems, was found dead in her vehicle on September 5, 1992, killed by strangulation. Her case sat cold for decades until investigators say new forensic evidence linked Woodward to her killing, according to The Mercury News. That evidence included Woodward's DNA found on a piece of rope preserved from the original crime scene. The California Statewide Law Enforcement Association has reported that the case also relied on the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Identification Unit re-examining more than 80 latent fingerprints collected from Houts' car back in 1992.
At the original crime scene, a three-foot nylon rope had been tightened with a square knot around Houts' neck, and footprints were left on the interior of her windshield, indicating a struggle, according to the Los Angeles Times. Her pocketbook was left undisturbed, a detail that steered detectives away from robbery as a motive and toward the idea that Houts had been targeted.
Two Hung Juries and a Judge's Dismissal
Woodward was charged twice in the 1990s in connection with Houts' death, and both trials ended with hung juries. In the 1995 trial, 8 of 12 jurors favored acquittal; in the 1996 trial, 7 of 12 did, according to the Supremecourt.gov. Prosecutors in the first trial had posited that Woodward was jealous of Houts' relationship with his roommate, Brent Fulmer — a jealousy-based motive theory that was later criticized as homophobic and was barred from the second trial.
After the second deadlock, Judge Lawrence Terry in 1996 ordered the murder charge dismissed in the furtherance of justice for insufficiency of the evidence, stating there was no likelihood a jury would convict without new evidence. Woodward has since argued that Terry's insufficiency declaration was tantamount to an acquittal, while Santa Clara County prosecutors and the California Attorney General's Office have countered that Terry's ruling left open the door to future prosecution if new evidence surfaced.
An Arrest at JFK Airport and a Case Reopened
Woodward relocated to the Netherlands after the 1996 dismissal, eventually becoming president and CEO of ReadyTech, an online training software company, until his July 2022 arrest at JFK Airport, according to Courthouse News. He had been in the country on a trip when he was taken into custody rather than surrendering voluntarily. Within 24 hours, Dutch law enforcement worked with the U.S. Department of Justice to search his residence and business in the Netherlands, seizing multiple computers and USB drives, per CBS News reporting cited in the case record.
Woodward challenged the renewed 2022 prosecution, and in August 2023, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Shella Deen dismissed the renewed murder charge on double-jeopardy grounds, ruling that the 1996 dismissal functioned as an acquittal under state law. The Sixth District Court of Appeal reversed that dismissal in March 2024, citing the 2000 Hatch decision, which asks whether a jury could determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt when viewing the prosecution's case favorably, and requires a clear record that a judge applied a substantial-evidence standard to find an acquittal. The California Supreme Court then declined to review the appellate ruling, and a state appellate court formally reinstated the murder case.
The Federal Fight Now Blocking a Third Trial
Woodward then filed a federal habeas petition in the Northern District of California, arguing that a new trial would violate his constitutional double-jeopardy protections and that state-court exhaustion of his claims was unnecessary. He argued the 1996 dismissal amounted to an acquittal under the broader federal double-jeopardy standard, which differs from California's own test. The California Attorney General's Office countered that Woodward must exhaust his state-court options before seeking federal habeas relief.
In March 2026, U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee stayed the start of any trial and found that Woodward had demonstrated a likelihood of success on his habeas petition, indicating that Terry's 1996 statements supported treating the dismissal as an acquittal. Lee is now weighing whether the prosecution violates double-jeopardy protections, and a criminal trial cannot proceed while that question remains open, though pretrial litigation, including evidentiary motions, is still allowed.
On February 24, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Woodward's petition on the underlying dismissal question. Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a statement noting that while California's Section 1385 dismissal standard raises an important double-jeopardy question, state courts should address it first in light of recent federal precedent, specifically citing the McElrath v. Georgia decision. The Supreme Court's Evans decision, from 2013, had defined an acquittal as any ruling that prosecution proof is insufficient to establish criminal liability — the very question now central to Lee's review.
Family Waits for a Case That Keeps Stalling
Cindy Ievers, Laurie Houts' sister, said she had believed the new forensic evidence would bring a timely resolution. Instead, the case has dragged through a state appellate reversal, a Supreme Court denial, and now a federal stay. Ievers said she would attend every proceeding and plans to be at the next scheduled court date, set for September 2, 2026, in San Jose, with supporters by her side.
Brent Fulmer, Woodward's former roommate whose relationship with Houts featured in the original, later-criticized motive theory, said the situation was infuriating and felt like justice was not working. Woodward's attorney, Dan Barton, declined to comment for the Mercury News report. A March 2024 appellate filing noted that investigators believe a full case dismissal would allow Woodward to return abroad, where any future U.S. extradition attempt could take years — a concern that has shaped the intense litigation over his ongoing home detention.
Part of a Wider Cold-Case Push
Houts' case fits into a broader pattern in Santa Clara County, where prosecutors and local police have used advanced DNA testing to solve multiple cold cases between 2020 and 2025, including the 1982 murder of Karen Stitt and the 1983 murder of Tara Markowski, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office. District Attorney Jeff Rosen established a dedicated Cold Case Unit to re-examine unsolved homicides, part of the same forensic push that resubmitted Houts' rope and fingerprint evidence to county crime labs beginning in late 2020.
In tribute to Houts, a 1985 Gunderson High School graduate and avid athlete, her family helped establish the Laurie Houts Memorial Girls Athletics Scholarship, supporting female graduating seniors pursuing STEM degrees while competing in sports. For now, whether Woodward ever faces a jury a third time rests not on that forensic evidence, but on a single unresolved legal question: whether a judge's words in a 1996 courtroom in Santa Clara County closed the door on prosecution forever.
