A man who passed a polygraph test over the 1979 murder of a 17-year-old girl in California has now been identified as her suspected killer.
On Wednesday, Nov. 20, the Riverside County District Attorney’s (DA) Office confirmed in a release that Lewis Randolph “Randy” Williamson had been identified as teenager Esther Gonzalez’s rapist and killer more than 45 years after her body was found dumped in a snowpack off Highway 243 near Banning on Feb. 10, 1979. She was killed the previous day, per the release.
“Authorities determined she had been raped and bludgeoned to death,” the DA’s office said in the statement, adding that “forensic genealogy” had helped them confirm the identify of the suspect decades after the killing.
The release stated that the victim had been murdered while “walking from her parents’ house in Beaumont to her sister’s house in Banning.”
“Esther’s body was found after an unidentified man, described by deputies as argumentative, called the Riverside County Sheriff’s Station in Banning to report finding a body, saying he didn’t know if it was a male or female,” authorities said.
“Five days later, sheriff’s investigators were able to identify the caller as Lewis Randolph ‘Randy’ Williamson and asked him to take a polygraph. He agreed and passed which, at the time, cleared him of any wrongdoing,” they added.
Through the years, investigators have continued to work on the case, and “eventually uploaded a semen sample from the crime scene into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS),” the DA’s office said.
A stock photo of a scientist pipetting a sample into a vial for DNA testing.
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“In 2023, members of the cold case homicide team sent various items of evidence to Othram, Inc. in Texas, initiating a Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy investigation, in hopes of developing additional leads,” authorities continued in the release.
“Earlier this year, a crime analyst assigned to the cold case team determined that, although Williamson was seemingly cleared by the polygraph in 1979, he was never cleared through DNA because the technology had not yet been developed,” the DA’s office added.
Williamson died in 2014 and a blood sample was collected during his autopsy.
“With the assistance of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, the sample was sent to the California Department of Justice (DOJ). DOJ recently confirmed that Williamson’s DNA matches the DNA recovered from Esther’s body,” the release concluded.
The investigation continues, and the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide Team is now seeking informationfrom anyone who knew the suspect.
