Police arrested a man believed to be responsible for the July 2005 murder of Sharon Ostman on Feb. 11, according to a San Luis Obispo Police Department press release.
Ostman’s body was found on July 11, 2005 in the creek area below Mission Plaza, and the ensuing investigation led officials to establish that Ostman had been the victim of a homicide.
Meticulous scrutiny of all variables ultimately enabled police to link 54-year-old Freddie Joe Lewis of San Luis Obispo, a registered sex offender, with the murder and detain him, police said.
The case involved months of exhaustive investigation focused on the examination of a large volume of physical evidence gathered from the crime scene, as well as more than 130 interviews with witnesses and persons of interest.
Those interviews included known registered sex offenders and took investigators several weeks, leading them to places as far away as Nevada, Oregon and Florida.
“We’ll typically interview all sex offenders in the city of the homicide, as they’re the people who’ve already established an abnormal pattern of behavior,” said Captain Ian Parkinson of the San Luis Obispo Police Department. “Especially in a case such as this, with no eye witnesses, you have to rely on physical evidence and interviews to try to determine what’s of value and tie it to possible suspects.”
The murder was prominent news in the San Luis Obispo community, given the fact that the body was discovered in the downtown area and the area’s small-town environment.
“Because murders are not very common, they’re automatically a big concern of the community when they occur in a small town such as this,” said political science professor and San Luis Obispo resident Allen Settle. “Such unfortunate and disturbing crimes can really unsettle a community, especially when there’s already many concerns with the men’s colony being so close by.”
Even students staying in the area over the summer remember the event getting a lot of coverage when it happened.
“Yeah, people were really up at arms about it,” said Andrew Rikli, an environmental engineering senior who remained in San Luis Obispo for the summer of 2005. “Growing up in a bigger city, I never saw too much attention devoted to any one crime such as this. But the attention to the murder made it such a big deal that we’d even hear about it when visiting the beach in Pismo.”
A multitude of evidence was gathered from the crime scene by the San Luis Obispo Police Department and the California Department of Justice. Analysis of this evidence took several months due to its large volume as well as other pending cases before the California Department of Justice.
The evidence probe allowed police to link Lewis to the murder in February 2006, making him the prime suspect. Subsequent investigation and developments in the case prompted investigators to establish that he was in fact the one responsible for the murder and issue a warrant for his arrest, police said.
In the period between when Lewis was first considered a suspect and his ultimate apprehension, police and the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s office remained mindful of the public’s safety. Lewis was either in police custody for unrelated parole violations, under police surveillance, or wearing a GPS tracking device during this time.
“Because of his prior criminal record, it was a lot easier to initially identify him and later keep tabs on him,” Parkinson said. “Parole violations made it fairly simple to keep an eye on him or just detain him outright.”
The investigation furnished police with the necessary warrant to arrest Lewis, and he has been in police custody since. He faces arraignment this week.
The investigation is still underway and officials urge anyone with further information about Freddie Lewis or the Sharon Ostman homicide to contact Crimestoppers at (805) 549-STOP or the San Luis Obispo Police Department tipline at (805) 783-7800.