Jury to hear evidence of prior abduction in decades-old murder case

A decades-old unsolved murder case is moving forward with a trial. Bay Area college student Julia Woodward’s body was found in Hungry Valley, north of Reno in 1979. Police say she was bludgeoned with a rock in the desert. Convicted sex offender Gary Sullivan is charged in the case. A judge recently ruled in an evidentiary hearing that she will allow the jury to hear evidence of a later crime of which Sullivan was tried and convicted. Sullivan was charged in the 2007 abduction of a young woman hitchhiker on I-80 in the Sierra, who escaped.