Arrest Made in Vanessa Pham Murder

Fairfax Police have made an arrest in the murder of Vanessa Pham, a Falls Church area teen who was stabbed to death in the summer of 2010.

Pham had been found dead in her Scion hatchback car on June 27, 2010, that was found in a ditch along Arlington Boulevard. A college freshman graduate of Vienna’s Madison High School, she was 19 years old.

Julio Miguel Blanco-Garcia, 27, of Willston Drive in Falls Church, was arrested the afternoon of Dec. 13 at a Vienna construction site where he’d been working and charged with the murder of Pham.

According to police reports, detectives were able to link Garcia to the case through analysis of forensic evidence, including DNA. According to police reports, the suspect was identified when forensic evidence from a previous arrest matched that collected during the investigation into Pham’s death.

Prior to the completion of an analysis of the evidence this week, Blanco-Garcia had not been a suspect. Police said that it appeared the assailant and victim did not know each other and did not comment on a motive or when the two parties came into contact.

The car owned by Pham, a freshman at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, had been identified departing the Fairfax Plaza Shopping Center on a surveillance video shortly before her death on June 27, 2010.

Blanco-Garcia was arraigned last Friday in the Fairfax General District Court, saying nothing about the charges against him and delaying a decision on whether the court should appoint an attorney for him. A preliminary hearing is set for Feb. 13.