DNA links suspect to 1979 California cold case killing —decades after he passed lie detector test

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’s 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’s Office.

An unidentified man, 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.

The man, later identified as Lewis Randolph “Randy” 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 over four decades with no other leads or witnesses.

However, last week, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said in a press release 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’s 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’t 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 Justice with the assistance of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

The cold case team then confirmed that Williamson’s DNA matched the DNA recovered from Gonzalez’s body.

The master investigator for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, Jason Corey, told CNN that the murder had been in Riverside County’s cold case unit since the unit’s launch about five years ago, and multiple investigators have worked to solve it.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like for them,” Corey told the outlet. “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,” he said.

Corey shared that forensic genealogy “will be a great investigative tool moving forward in the future” to help investigators generate leads for unsolved cases.

“It 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,” 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 [email protected].