Jenny Lin

Case background and investigation

Jennifer "Jenny" Lin was an eighth-grade student in Castro Valley, an unincorporated community in Alameda County, California. Her father, John Lin, has described her as a well-liked, straight-A student, and the Alameda County Sheriff's Office remembers her as a skilled musician and honor roll student.

On May 27, 1994, she was at home after school. According to the Pleasanton Weekly, she was stabbed to death between 5:15 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. ABC7 News, citing the sheriff's office, reported that the killer entered the house through a window and waited for her. Her father found her body in a bathroom when he came home from work. No motive was apparent, and investigators have long believed the killer had little or no prior contact with her, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The family set up a $100,000 reward shortly after the killing and founded the Jenny Lin Foundation, incorporated in 1994, which promotes child safety and youth music education. The foundation runs a free summer music camp that ends with an annual tribute concert.

In May 2006 the sheriff's department publicly named Sebastian Shaw, a man serving three life sentences in Oregon for murders committed in Portland, as its suspect. The Chronicle reported that he had been one of more than 50 people examined early in the inquiry, that he had been found in August 1994 in a car stolen in nearby San Ramon, and that he had not been arrested or charged in the Lin case. He never was. Shaw died in prison in October 2021, and in June 2022 Sheriff Greg Ahern told ABC7 that Shaw had once been considered the prime suspect but was later ruled out.

In April 2022 the family and friends doubled the reward to $200,000. Two months later, at the annual vigil, Ahern said all the evidence had been re-examined with newer DNA technology capable of extracting additional cells, that this had produced new leads, and that investigators had possibilities they would not disclose. The sheriff's office said on the anniversary in 2025 that the evidence is resubmitted to crime laboratories as technology develops.

The case remained unsolved in July 2026, when ABC7 reported on the foundation's concert and the family's continuing appeal. Anyone with information can contact the Alameda County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Homicide Unit at (510) 667-3661 or its anonymous tip line at (510) 667-3622.