At the end of November, police in Riverside County, in the US state of California, announced that they had solved a 45-year-old cold case, thanks to a DNA sample taken during the autopsy of a suspect after his death.
He had passed through the mesh detector, but was betrayed by a drop of blood taken during his autopsy. On February 9, 1979, Esther Gonzalez, 17, was walking to her sister’s home in Banning, California, not far from her parents. But the teenager never arrived at her destination. His lifeless body was found in the snow the next day, on the side of a highway, by the police, after a call from a man who said he was unable to determine whether it was a man or of a woman, the corpse was so damaged.
Esther Gonzalez’s autopsy determined that the teenager had been assaulted, raped and bludgeoned to death. Police quickly suspected the caller reporting his discovery, Lewis Randolph “Randy” Williamson, as the killer. The latter was therefore subjected to the lie detector and “passed” the test, which “at the time, exonerated him of any wrongdoing”. For more than 40 years, investigators searched in vain for another suspect. When the DNA appeared, the investigators returned to the seals to take a sperm sample from the victim.
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The murderer who died in 2014
And in 2023, detectives decided to send the file to a genetic genealogy laboratory in Texas to try to solve this cold case and the DNA spoke. Jason Corey, the lead investigator for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, announced to US media, including CNN, that a blood sample taken from Lewis Williamson after his death in 2014 during his autopsy matched sperm DNA found in Esther Gonzalez.
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“We are very happy to finally be able to turn the page,” wrote the victim’s sister, Elizabeth Gonzalez, 64, in an email to CNN, assuring that the latest developments in this unresolved case bring “peace” to his family. “We are delighted about it, but as the man is dead we are a little sad that he will not be convicted for his murder. »
