Bar owner in Bay Area was bludgeoned in 1979. Sonora man now faces murder charge
A Sonora man faces a murder charge in the 1979 bludgeoning death of a bar owner in Santa Clara County.
Police in Sunnyvale arrested Thomas Curtis Hinnard, now 69, on suspicion of fatally striking Keith Judge in the head. The attack happened before dawn in the victim’s office at the bar.
The case had gone cold until the 2018 discovery of fingerprints that had been misplaced, said a news release from the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety.
Officers from that city located Hinnard in Sonora on Feb. 12 with help from the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office. He was living in a homeless camp along Stockton Road, the Union Democrat newspaper reported.
“Sometimes an arrest may take years or even decades, but our detectives are relentless and work hard behind the scenes to help bring justice to victims and their families,” the release said.
It provided these further details:
Judge was 45 when he was attacked on July 19, 1979, at his Lakeside Lounge on the 1100 block of Lawrence Expressway.
He had gone there to clean up and account for transactions from the night before. Shortly afterward, an unknown person entered the bar and attacked and robbed him.
An employee arrived at about 5:30 a.m. and found Judge in a pool of blood. He was taken to a local hospital, where he died. He left a wife and two children.
Police responded within minutes of the report and gathered fingerprints, as well as footprints in the victim’s blood. A suspect other than Hinnard was arrested that week, but the charges were later dropped for insufficient evidence.
The case went cold until 2018, when Detective Matt Hutchison reopened it and came upon the misplaced fingerprints. An examination by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office matched them to Hinnard’s prints from an unrelated case.
Hutchison found that Hinnard had worked in an Exxon station next to the bar at the time of Judge’s death. He also frequented the lounge.
“Detective Hutchison spent many months locating and re-interviewing dozens of people including the suspect, Thomas Hinnard,” the release said. “During the interview, Hinnard lied several times and made numerous incriminating statements.”
The Union Democrat reported that the suspected murder weapon was an ax handle and that cash was stolen from the bar.
The paper also said news of Hinnard’s arrest shocked local friends who had found him to be a caring person in recent years.
Hinnard had a Feb. 18 arraignment in Santa Clara Superior Court that was postponed to April 9. He has not entered a plea. The defendant remained in that county’s jail without bail as of Friday.
This story was originally published February 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
