Murder Suspect May Also Have Killed Aunt

Police in California are revisiting the unsolved strangulation of an aunt of the man charged in the slayings of a lesbian couple here.

“There is nothing specific about that case that links him to that,” said Tulare County Sheriff’s Department Detective Sgt. John Zapalac. “It’s just one of any number of unsolved cases that would be looked at. It will be routinely checked just like all the other unsolveds.”

Robert James Acremant, 27, was arrested Wednesday in Stockton, Calif., on Oregon warrants charging him with aggravated murder in the Dec. 4 slayings of Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill, who were domestic partners as well as partners in a property management firm.

An extradition hearing was scheduled in San Joaquin County Superior Court in Stockton.

His aunt, Sherri Renee Herrera, 30, of Tulare, Calif., disappeared March 25, 1993. Her body was found five days later next to a highway on-ramp in the desert east of Indio, Calif. She had been strangled.

Herrera was a waitress with four children and was dating a truck driver from San Diego who worked for the same company as Acremant, Herrerra’s mother, Joyce Robbins, told The Oregonian.

Acremant’s father, Kenneth Acre mant, a cattle rancher and bar owner in Stockton, Calif., said his son felt the pressures of failing in a computer software venture in Los Angeles and breaking up with his girlfriend proved too much for his son.

Robert Acremant also admitted to killing a friend, Scott George, 23, of Visalia, Calif., on Oct. 3 in a fit of rage after a night of drinking, Kenneth Acremant said.