California authorities have finally identified the man who allegedly killed Esther Gonzalez 45 years ago.
CNN reported Sunday that investigators with the Riverside County Police Department used DNA testing and genetic genealogy to close a case that had dragged on for more than four decades.
On February 9, 1979, Esther Gonzalez, a 17-year-old teenager, was walking to her sister’s house. However, she never arrived at the residence in Banning, a small town about 80 miles east of Los Angeles.
His body was found in a snow bank on the side of a highway the next day. The young woman had been attacked, raped and beaten to death with a baton.
The man who made the gruesome discovery, Lewis Randolph “Randy” Williamson, had taken a polygraph test at the request of the police. Having succeeded, Williamson was then removed from the list of suspects.
Photo Riverside County District Attorney’s Office via CNN
45 years later, he is now named as the probable murderer of Esther Gonzalez.
Even though no culprit had been identified over the years, the investigation remained open. Last year, the team on the case sent several pieces of evidence from the crime scene, including a semen sample to a laboratory specializing in genetic genealogy.
It clicked. Williamson had been ruled out thanks to his answers to the polygraph test, but forensic investigative methods were rather limited at the time.
“Although Williamson was apparently exonerated by polygraph in 1979, he was never exonerated by DNA because the technology had not yet been developed,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Even though Williamson died in 2014, authorities were able to use a blood sample that was taken during his autopsy. The DNA matched that of the semen found on Gonzalez’s body in 1979.
Esther’s sister, Elizabeth, said she was happy to learn that the murderer had finally been identified 45 years after the tragedy that struck her family.
“We are very happy to finally have an ending. We are happy about it but, since the guy died, a little sad that there will be no time for his murder,” she commented to CNN.
