A man who passed a lie detector test for the 1979 rape and murder of a teen girl now has DNA linking him to the victim – but he’ll never see inside a prison because he’s already dead.
Authorities have revealed the newfound evidence put to bed a cold case that left detectives stumped for more than 45 years. On February 9, 1979, Esther Gonzalez was walking from her home in Beaumont, California, to her sister’s house in Banning when she was attacked. The following day, the 17-year-old’s body was found dumped in a snowpack off Highway 243.
According to the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, police determined that Esther had been raped and then fatally struck.
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Lewis Randolph ‘Randy’ Williamson, who was described by deputies at the time as “argumentative,” found the body and called the Riverside County Sheriff’s Station, saying he didn’t know if it was a male or female.
(Image: Riverside County DA)
Williamson was asked by sheriff’s investigators to take a polygraph test, which he agreed to and passed, clearing “him of any wrongdoing”.
The case went cold for more than four decades with no other leads or witnesses, until last week. A press release from the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said the 45-year-long case had been solved using forensic genealogy.
The investigation was renewed in 2023 by the cold case homicide team of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
(Image: Othram)
Investigators used the semen sample from Gonzalez’s body, found 44 years ago, and checked it against genetic genealogy databases. They discovered that Williamson, who died in Florida in 2014, had not been cleared by DNA testing because the technology was not available when he took the polygraph test in 1979.
During Williamson’s autopsy, doctors collected a blood sample that the team could use to check if his DNA matched. The sample was sent to the California Department of Justice with the assistance of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
(Image: KCAL)
The cold case team then confirmed that Williamson’s DNA matched the DNA recovered from Gonzalez’s body.
According to Jason Corey, the chief investigator at the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, this murder has been in the cold case unit since it began about five years ago, and many investigators have been involved in trying to solve it.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like for them,” Corey told CNN. “That whole family has just been devastated over the years. This is a day in and day in, day out thing. I don’t think this is something that ever got easier for them as time went on.
“I don’t know if you can say you’re happy that it’s done, because it’s still, it’s still a terrible tragedy, but I hope it can bring them some closure.”
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