{"id":116541,"date":"2024-11-26T09:10:39","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T09:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/dna-links-suspect-to-1979-california-cold-case-killing-decades-after-he-passed-lie-detector-test-new-york-post\/"},"modified":"2024-11-26T09:10:39","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T09:10:39","slug":"dna-links-suspect-to-1979-california-cold-case-killing-decades-after-he-passed-lie-detector-test-new-york-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/dna-links-suspect-to-1979-california-cold-case-killing-decades-after-he-passed-lie-detector-test-new-york-post\/","title":{"rendered":"DNA links suspect to 1979 California cold case killing \u2014decades after he passed lie detector test – New York Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man who was cleared by a polygraph test for the rape and murder of a teenage girl in 1979 has now been linked to the suspect with newfound DNA evidence, authorities revealed.
17-year-old Esther Gonzalez had been walking from her home in Beaumont, Calif., to her sister\u2019s house in Banning, about 85 miles east of Los Angeles, on Feb. 9, 1979, when she was attacked.
The following day, the teen’s body was found dumped in a snowpack off Highway 243, with authorities determining she was raped and then bludgeoned to death, according to the Riverside County District Attorney\u2019s Office.
An unidentified man, described by deputies at the time as \u201cargumentative,\u201d found the body and called the Riverside County Sheriff\u2019s Station, saying he didn\u2019t know if it was a male or female.
The man, later identified as Lewis Randolph \u201cRandy\u201d Williamson, was asked by sheriff\u2019s investigators to take a polygraph test, which he agreed to and passed, clearing \u201chim of any wrongdoing.\u201d
The case went cold for over four decades with no other leads or witnesses.
However, last week, the Riverside County District Attorney\u2019s Office said in a press release<\/a> that the case had been solved using forensic genealogy, ending the over 45-year-long cold case.
The cold case homicide team of the Riverside County Sheriff\u2019s Department renewed the investigation in 2023.
Using the semen sample found on Gonzalez’s body 44 years prior and running it through genetic genealogy databases, investigators realized that Williamson had never been cleared through DNA testing because the technology didn\u2019t exist when he passed the polygraph test in 1979.
Williamson died in Florida in 2014, but during his autopsy, a blood sample was taken, which the team could use to test if his DNA was a match.
The sample was sent to the California Department of Just<\/span>ice with the assistance of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
The cold case team then confirmed that Williamson\u2019s DNA matched the DNA recovered from Gonzalez\u2019s body.
The master investigator for the Riverside County Sheriff\u2019s Office, Jason Corey, told CNN <\/a>that the murder had been in Riverside County\u2019s cold case unit since the unit\u2019s launch about five years ago, and multiple investigators have worked to solve it.
\u201cI can\u2019t imagine what it\u2019s like for them,\u201d Corey told the outlet. \u201cThat whole family has just been devastated over the years. This is a day in and day in, day out thing. I don\u2019t think this is something that ever got easier for them as time went on.\u201d
\u201cI don\u2019t know if you can say you\u2019re happy that it\u2019s done, because it\u2019s still, it\u2019s still a terrible tragedy, but I hope it can bring them some closure,\u201d he said.
Corey shared that forensic genealogy “will be a great investigative tool moving forward in the future\u201d to help investigators generate leads for unsolved cases.
\u201cIt will help do a lot of good and not only identify victims, but it will help point the investigators in a direction with their investigative leads that will help bring those suspects to justice,\u201d Corey told the outlet.
The Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide Team encourages anyone who knew Williamson or may have information about the case or other potential victims to contact them at 951-955-277 or coldcaseunit@rivcoda.gov.
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A man who was cleared by a polygraph test for the rape and murder of a teenage girl in 1979 has now been linked to the suspect with newfound DNA evidence, authorities revealed. 17-year-old Esther Gonzalez had been walking from her home in Beaumont, Calif., to her sister\u2019s house in Banning, about 85 miles east […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":116542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}