John Kevin Woodward biography: 13 things about Readytech CEO from the Netherlands

John Kevin Woodward is a gay man from the Netherlands. In 1992, he lived in California, United States and was allegedly in love with his roommate, who was the boyfriend of Laurie Anne Houts, a computer engineer at Adobe Systems in Mountain View, California.

Woodward has lived in different parts of California including Napa, Dos Rios, Modesto, Emeryville, Oakland, Eureka, Mendocino and Alameda. Here are 10 more things about him:

MEDIA: This is the only booking photo we have at this time for suspect John Kevin Woodward. He has not yet been extradited to CA.

Another photo will be made available when he is booked into our county. For those looking for an image to use with your reporting, please use this. pic.twitter.com/p3IgN0vYmU

— Mountain View Police (@MountainViewPD) July 13, 2022

1. He was 7 years younger than Houts.
2. On September 5, 1992, he allegedly fatally strangled Houts in her car in Mountain View. Police listened when her boyfriend asked him if he killed her. He asked what the investigators knew and he had no alibi. His fingerprints were located on the outside of her car but investigators failed to show he was inside the car.
3. In 1995, he was prosecuted unsuccessfully in the killing of Houts with the jury hanging 8-4 in favor of acquittal. Jurors and defense attorneys deemed the evidence as insufficient because most of it were circumstantial besides indeterminate fingerprint samples.
4. In 1996, he was prosecuted unsuccessfully again in the killing of Houts with the jury hanging 7-5 in favor of acquittal. After his acquittal, he moved from California to the Netherlands.
5. On March 8, 2011, he became the president and chief executive officer of ReadyTech, an online training company based in the Netherlands with an office in Oakland, California.
6. In 2020, the Mountain View Police Department started reexamining the case involving him and the murder of Houts in 1992.
7. In 2021, a deoxyribonucleic acid sample collected from the rope used to kill Houts in 1992 was analyzed by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Crime Laboratory using Y-STR analysis of paternal male chromosomes and it yielded a match to him.
8. In January 2022, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office filed a case and a warrant was activated for his arrest.
9. On July 9, 2022, he was arrested for Houts’ murder as he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, New York, USA after traveling from the Netherlands.
10. On July 11, 2022, he waived extradition while being held without bail in New York. He was charged with Houts’ murder for the third time.
11. In February 2023, he turned 59.
12. On August 24, 2023, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Shella Deen dismissed the murder charges against him citing double jeopardy.
13. On August 29, 2023, Deen granted a stay order to keep him under house arrest with an ankle monitor.