DNA evidence has solved a cold case a 1991 homicide in which a woman was stabbed to death in front of her teenage daughter at her store in American Canyon, according to the Napa County Sheriffs Office.

The suspect, Michael Lantz, a convicted bank robber from American Canyon and Vallejo, will not be brought to trial. He died in 1994 in federal prison in Missouri, investigators said Thursday.

Lantz was identified by DNA found on the handle of the knife used to kill Kin Po Ko, Sheriffs Capt. Leroy Anderson said.

Ko, 38, was at Sams Market on March 23, 1991 with her 14-year-old daughter when two men came into her store at the corner of Poco Way and Broadway/Highway 29. A man approached the counter and brandished a knife while he removed cash from the register, Anderson said.

But Ko tried to retrieve the cash and began to struggle with the man who stabbed her once in the back, police said. Ko, whose store had been robbed before, fired a gun, but only hit a door, Anderson said.

She tried to pursue her attacker, but gave up before collapsing inside the doorway, Anderson said. Kos daughter called 911.

Sheriffs investigators said the suspect and another man fled the scene and disappeared. Ko died at the hospital later that day from the knife injury.

Lantz was identified after the serial number on the knife led detectives to a relative of the suspect. Although Lantz was considered the primary suspect, he could not be found for a year after the killing, greatly hampering the investigation, Anderson said. The second man, possibly a lookout, was never identified.

The Napa County district attorneys office felt there was not enough evidence to prosecute Lantz, explained Todd Shulman, a Napa Police Department detective and a member of Napa Countys cold case unit.

Evidence from the scene included the knife, cigarette butts left outside the store, now Broadway Market, and a beer can, Shulman said. Luckily, Lantz DNA had been uploaded to a nationwide DNA bank after he was sent to prison for bank robbery, he said.

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Cold-case unit: DNA solves 1991 homicide