A suspicious teenager fatally stabbed a teacher in a High School in California more than four decades ago was identified after a relative told the authorities a confession of decades made immediately after the murder, authorities said.
Harry Nickerson, who was 16 when the office of the District Prosecutor of Santa Clara said that he killed Diane Peterson at the Branham High School of San José in 1978, died for suicide in 1993.
In a press release on Monday, the prosecutor said that a previous witness in the case told the investigators that he had seen Nickerson carry a knife with the phrase “Dear Master” written in him.
That account could not be corroborated, said the prosecutor’s office.
Peterson was found lying on the floor near his classroom with a single stab in the wound on the chest on June 16, 1978, a day after the recessed school for the summer, according to the statement.
The teachers were cleaning their classrooms at that time.
Nickerson was treated as a suspect in the murder, according to the statement. In 1983, a student’s relatives told the police that the student claimed to have seen Nickerson stab Peterson, but the student denied him to the authorities.

In 1984, a witness told the Police that Nickerson had been involved in the murder, according to the statement.
Later, Nickerson was convicted of armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping, and was shot and critically injured during a drug theft, said the prosecutor’s office.
Recent efforts to identify Peterson’s murderer using DNA were not successful, according to the statement.
During a meeting with the researchers this year, a relative from Nickerson told the authorities that the adolescent had come home minutes after the murder and confessed.
Rob Baker, prosecutor of the Case Unit of the District Prosecutor of the County of Santa Clara, said in an email that it was not clear why the relative did not appear before, but the person provided a detailed statement “demonstrating a unique knowledge about the crime that could only come from someone who spoke with the murderer.”
In the statement, a relative of Peterson was summoned by thanking the researchers for not giving up, and saying: “Diane was a beautiful and wonderful person to whom he missed a lot.”