Husband charged with wife's murder

Twenty-four years after a young mother in a troubled marriage disappeared, Auburn police have charged her husband, a retired Placer County sheriff's sergeant, with her murder.

Paul Ralph Kovacich Jr., 57, is scheduled to be arraigned at 1 p.m. today in Dept. 13 of Placer County Superior Court on charges of murder with malice aforethought.

Kovacich is being held without bail in the Placer County jail.

Janet Kovacich was 27 and the mother of two children, ages 5 and 7, when her husband reported her missing on Sept. 8, 1982.

At the time, Kovacich told police the couple had argued that morning in their Auburn home and that he had left to go to Kmart. When he returned, he said, she and her purse were gone.

Kovacich asked to be allowed to investigate himself; police consented, but opened their own investigation three days later, according to published reports.

In the months leading up to her disappearance, Janet Kovacich had told loved ones that her husband had beaten to death the family dog, Fuzz, after the animal had gotten into the trash. She had told them she wanted out of the marriage.

Janet Kovacich had enrolled at Sierra College. She had cosmetic surgery to remove some scars shortly before her disappearance, according to the missing person's Web site, www.doenetwork.us.

On the morning she was last seen, Janet Kovacich had made an appointment with Forest Lake Christian School on Combie Road to transfer her children there from a Catholic school in Auburn. The appointment was for later that day. She never arrived.

Using dogs and helicopters, agents combed the canyon and caves around the proposed Auburn Dam site. Helicopters flew with heat-detecting equipment, to no avail.

On at least one occasion, forensics experts tested the DNA of remains that had been found, but there was no match.

Jordan Fisher Smith wrote about Janet Kovacich's disappearance in his 2005 book, "Nature Noir," a memoir of his years in the American River canyon area where searches failed to find her. Her disappearance haunted him.

Then, between March and late July of 2005, Auburn police and FBI agents twice searched the Lake of the Pines home of Paul R. Kovacich Sr., digging up his carefully landscaped and meticulously maintained yard in search of clues to his daughter-in-law's disappearance.

They found the remains of a dog. An examination showed that bones had been broken at the time of the animal's death.

Police also seized a Ford Bronco that had been owned by the couple from an Auburn storage facility.

It was not clear what had prompted the renewed digging in the case, but investigators at the time cited advances in forensic technology that made old evidence newly interesting. They also mentioned an anonymous tipster who had been in contact with the Auburn police and the FBI.

Over the past two weeks, lawyers from the county district attorney's office had presented evidence in the case to the Placer County Grand Jury. The grand jury handed down an indictment late Tuesday morning, enabling police to obtain an arrest warrant more than a year after declaring Kovacich a suspect.

At 5:40 p.m. Tuesday, Auburn police arrested Kovacich without incident on Foresthill Road near Todd Valley Road. At the time, Kovacich was putting a bicycle into the back of a sports utility vehicle driven by Dixie King, his longtime girlfriend, police said.

Placer County Superior Court Judge James D. Garbolino sealed the grand jury transcripts "because it's such a sensitive case," Auburn Police Capt. Jim Weldon said. He could not discuss any further details due to the continuing investigation, he said.

However, police did say the investigation was aided by agents from sheriff's departments in Placer and Sacramento counties; police in Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln; the California Department of Justice and Office of Emergency Services; and the FBI.

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To contact Staff Writer Trina Kleist, e-mail trinak@theunion.com or call 477-4231. Staff Writer David Mirhadi contributed to this story.