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00:00February the 10th 1979 banning Southern California police receive an anonymous call
00:09the caller was short was rude didn't want to provide any information said you know I just
00:15don't want to be involved I was out walking my dog and then the caller disconnected the line
00:20when police arrive at the scene they find the body of a young girl through all that beauty
00:26for that to be a discarded place for a wonderful human being it's just very very sad her head had
00:32been caved in most likely with a tire iron brutal injuries for her to sustain detectives recover
00:39biological evidence left behind by the killer at the scene the DNA from the autopsy was sent into
00:45various labs for various reasons and DNA was still in its infancy and we're just crossing our fingers
00:53that something's gonna work after tireless efforts the case goes cold until a groundbreaking
00:59investigative technique blows it wide open that was huge in this case DNA was great you may think
01:08that you can get away with it you can get away with it for only so long every contact leaves a trace
01:12criminals who have hidden in the shadows for years find there's no escaping science in their own family
01:18DNA welcome to bloodline detectives
01:22located in riverside county banning is a small california town with a
01:52population of just over 30,000 riverside county is a large county
02:02it's such a wonderful place to live there are so many different areas you can be at the beach in an
02:09hour you can be in the mountain skiing in an hour and the areas that we have we have ranch style areas we
02:17have desert we have the desert communities with the resorts we have regular you know working folks you
02:25know coming home to regular neighborhoods banning is the eastern end of the county it's a small but
02:31growing town and is at the base of the foothills leading up to Idlewild which is one of our mountainous
02:37areas banning encompasses what every town encompasses it has people of all social economic groups you have
02:49your smaller homes larger families big homes banning used to be an area that was a bit more rural back in
02:571979 very small community you could actually walk from Beaumont to banning banning to Beaumont
03:05very few streets the population was very low now it's boomed in every community you're going to have your
03:17challenges you're going to have good people there and then you're going to have some bad people there
03:22you're going to have some good people that come through that community and then you have some bad people
03:26come through that community but for the most part it was it was a safe place
03:29February the 10th 1979 banning police receive a distressing call the initial call was a call into
03:39the banning sheriff's station sometime that afternoon one of the ladies there answered the call
03:45and then got a deputy sheriff because the person was claiming to have found a body and so the deputy
03:52sheriff came on the line was trying to get more information and the caller was was short was was
03:58rude didn't want to provide any information said you know i just don't want to be involved i was out
04:03walking my dog and then the caller disconnected the line so the deputy sheriff got everybody rolling and
04:10they went out to that area the body of a teenage girl is discovered in a remote area known as the poppit
04:17flats pretty much right at the rise is poppet flats it's a flat area there kind of like a tabletop area
04:29but as far as the overlook it's beautiful it's just very very picturesque through all that beauty
04:36for that to be a discarded place for a wonderful human being it's just very very sad during that time
04:43it was cold weather off of highway 243 and papa flats it was actually there was snow on the ground
04:50we respond out to a scene and we conduct an examination we determined that it was female
04:56remains that it appeared that it was a homicide
05:04when this happens we have law enforcement come out with us the coroner's office we have a forensics team
05:10and we collect evidence that's on scene the detectives in 1979 they did the same thing what
05:18any other detective unit would do they'd go out there the scene was cordoned off it was secured
05:23no one went in no one went out you'd walk through with the case agent the co-case agents the deputy that
05:28went out there that found the body a dea if he was there at that time and the forensic people would go
05:34out there also you take pictures at that time it was polaroid pictures you don't know what your evidence
05:41is and how it's related you don't know if it is related you don't know if it's something that was
05:46there prior to uh you know to that victim being there if you have to ask yourself the question should
05:51i collect this then the answer is yes then you should collect it because you just you don't know
05:57i'm sure there's been a lot of evidence that i've collected and have had forensic technicians over
06:01the years go why the heck are you collecting this you know you're you're making more work but we
06:05just we don't know in an outdoor crime scene she was on the side of the roadway covered by clothing
06:13she had her own pantyhose wrapped around her neck there was books and other debris found around her she
06:24was partially clothed it appeared that she had been sexually assaulted the area was cold and it had
06:32just recently snowed she was cold to the touch and appeared to be in rigor mortis which is stiff
06:41and that was breakable but still in a condition that you can tell that she had been there for a few
06:48hours on this particular crime scene they collected articles of clothing cotton bulb was collected and
06:57a beer can along with those articles of clothing so not a lot of evidence to go with we then at that
07:04time had a contracted war tray that brings the remains to a mortuary that is contracted with us
07:10during the autopsy detectives discover semen on the victim's body clear evidence that she had been
07:18sexually assaulted the autopsy revealed that she had strangulation after death it didn't result in the
07:27death but there was strangulation that occurred after the death with the result of having a stocking
07:35placed around her neck she had blunt force trauma to the head resulting in a skull fracture her head
07:45had been caved in most likely with a tire iron just brutal injuries for her to sustain
07:52investigators suspect the victim is 17 year old esther gonzalez who was reported missing just one day
07:58earlier esther was identified later by having her parents come and view her
08:06esther gonzalez was a 17 year old female esther was a christian the family were affiliated with the
08:13jehovah witness congregation it's a very conservative religion they're not very flamboyant they don't
08:20party and celebrate birthdays and holidays and things like that they just kind of keep things very very
08:25simple and it seemed like that's how esther led her life she had a boyfriend and he was also affiliated
08:32with with the religion so they went to church together it seemed that she was having a difficult
08:38time in life and separated from her parents and struggling with the cusp of adulthood and struggling
08:46with not wanting to have the authority of what was going on with her parents esther at the time did not
08:53get along with her family she was having some struggles with family she lived with her sister in
08:58banning her parents lived in beaumont so the day that esther went missing the last day they saw her
09:05she had an argument with her father her father wanted her to you know come back home esther was
09:11very independent at 17. she left and she and she was going to walk to her sister's house
09:19elizabeth went after her in the vehicle and tried to get her back in the car and she's just like you know
09:23no no i just want to cool off i want to walk i know that she didn't want to get in the car she
09:28probably wanted to continue to walk i don't know personally but i can understand that sometimes you
09:32just want to walk when you're upset about something
09:37when she didn't show up around nine o'clock her sisters called her parents and said where's esther
09:44detectives launch a full-scale homicide investigation
09:48those guys back then they were fighting with both hands tied behind their backs that's all they had
09:53is good old-fashioned detective work getting out knocking on doors talking with people they interviewed
09:58a lot of her friends from school they went through the victimology they went through her background who
10:04was in her sphere of influence at the time friends boyfriends uh you know other people in the community
10:10uh you know all those folks that they that they went through but when you don't have the tools that
10:16we have today it's hard to to put that over the top the sheriff's office back in the 70s
10:24they had an office in banning the big office out of out of riverside and indio
10:35the banning of those days was a cowboy town and they did their investigation to a much greater extent
10:42than a local police department would sheriff's department is pretty well trained on
10:46each procedure has to be done they're pretty good about this even back then we didn't have all the
10:54dna but they knew enough to retain everything they can everything put it file it keep it
11:01someday down the road it may be valuable
11:06the case is now upgraded to a full-scale murder investigation detectives turn their attention to
11:11the mysterious caller receiving a tip that may uncover his identity
11:26on february the 10th 1979 police receive a 911 call from an unknown male about a body dumped near
11:33banning california he's described as argumentative and ends the call without giving further details
11:39detectives arrive on scene discovering the body of 17 year old esther gonzalez who'd gone missing the
11:46day before days later riverside county investigators are able to identify the mysterious caller as 25 year
11:54old randy williamson he was identified as the man who hung up the phone randy he was 25 years old and
12:02married at the time of this incident and ended up being a friend of esther's older brother
12:11randy after he spoke to investigators he actually did concede to a polygraph test or a lie detector test
12:18what i do know about a polygraph is that it measures various body responses that are automatic that you
12:25cannot have control over it measures your heart rate your breathing how much you're sweating those sorts of
12:31things things you cannot control whether or not people can pass a polygraph it depends i think a
12:37pathological liar in my opinion could because they believe what they're saying as to be truth
12:42so if you believe it you're not going to show any symptoms even if you're even if you can't control
12:47those automatic things a polygraph examiner who's very good might tell you different
12:53the examiner will be able to rate those
12:57stimuluses and figure out if they believe that person is being honest or truthful they'll they'll
13:03ask a series of questions while they're hooked up to that polygraph machine they'll provide truthful
13:08responses they'll see how their body will react to those truthful questions and then they'll ask a
13:13series of of false questions that they know that they're going to provide false answers to and they'll
13:18see how their body reacts and then they can gauge a baseline of how their body's going to react to those things
13:27and by all accounts randy successfully passed the polygraph test and there didn't appear to be
13:33any issues or the investigators felt like he was no longer a usual suspect so they thanked him for his
13:41participation and he went on with his life the 1979 technology i'm not sure what that was like or what the
13:50experience level of the examiner was back then i'm almost positive that it was probably very experienced
13:57but i i can only imagine you know it's still just an investigative tool and it's not the end-all be-all
14:04that's going to you know absolutely say you know yes or yes or no this person is you know is lying or
14:10telling the truth it's a difficult process and so the investigators would have probably done a little
14:19bit more work outside of that polygraph to either include or exclude a person from the crime but if they
14:27don't really have a lot else to go on without probable cause getting search warrants and going further
14:32it's you know it's extremely difficult
14:37the initial investigation went for quite a bit a couple years where they were doing active work on
14:42it and then continue to uh to do work on the case all the way up through the 1990s then it just became
14:51sporadic work on it and different investigators would pick it up and go back out interview some other
14:57some other people and do some additional work on it in 2002 a new cold case team utilizes advanced
15:06forensic dna techniques to re-examine the murder of esther gonzalez their goal to identify the killer
15:13through the semen sample found during the autopsy the dna from the autopsy was sent into various labs for
15:21various reasons and in 1979 dna was still in its infancy and we're just crossing our fingers that
15:30something's going to work dna stands for diroxy ribonucleic acid dna is what makes all of us up
15:39you get 50 of it from your mom 50 of it from your dad it is the blueprint of what makes you you
15:45we just really started using dna for cases in 1986 right and when we first started using dna it
15:51required a huge sample now the samples are smaller and smaller and smaller and technology is just
15:57expanding so now there are instruments where you can get a profile in 90 minutes you know it used to
16:03be that you couldn't get a profile for months well now with the advent of rapid dna we can give you a
16:09profile in 90 minutes that's huge something that used to take six months now you can do this now
16:16with the advent of rapid dna systems we can take dna from a crime scene compare it to a known person
16:23and say these two things absolutely match within 90 minutes as opposed to waiting six months or waiting
16:29five years or however many years the other thing that is very promising with dna is that it is taking
16:35smaller and smaller samples it used to be that when we collected dna it needed to be something that
16:41we could see well everybody's familiar with the term touch dna which is a an item that's been touched or
16:47handled i i prefer the term handled but handled by somebody you can't always see that dna look at your
16:52phone you can't always see the dna but we could swab your phone especially where the mouthpiece is and
16:57you're speaking because you are putting dna onto that but back in the early 80s we didn't know that
17:04existed so dna is a really exciting field and there's a lot of changes and a lot of the changes
17:10that are happening are automation so we're taking out the human error as well because the instruments
17:16like in the case of the rapid instrument is doing all of the hard work all the users are doing is
17:21taking the data provided by the instrument putting it into software and telling the software to do it
17:27so that also ultimately cuts down on cost which makes that a more usable tool for investigations
17:34it's not so expensive that it excludes it excludes itself right so it's dna is a fascist there's so
17:41many things in in science and forensics that are just changing for the better additionally there is
17:48another new instrument where you can take an article of dna basically wash it almost like using a rug cleaner
17:56wash it and pull the water residue through a filter and it concentrates the dna off of something as
18:04simple as a rock or off of clothing and then that dna can be be analyzed by a dna analyst dna is
18:10becoming so specific we even now have things called e-dna which is environmental dna where you can take
18:16a sample of water and hopefully tell what may have walked upstream or what is in the water by just running
18:23the dna samples it's amazing detectives enter the dna profile into codis the combined dna index system
18:32any time a individual commits a crime that warrants their dna to be taken from them their dna is then
18:42placed into codis and so then any time in a sexual assault occurs a homicide occurs we then and we have
18:50no known suspect at that time then a sample is taken from that homicide victim and is then placed into
19:00the system and it then starts working its magic of trying to put comparisons together and when a hit
19:07comes then we can find our suspect in this case there was nothing out there that compared and came
19:15back when they would run the dna to say hey is is there a match in our codis system and when the dna
19:21analysts would run codis against this unknown dna nothing would come up i started working in 2002
19:30when banning station called our unit central homicide unit and they needed a detective to help them
19:36on with a cold case they told me that they were opening this cold case on esther gonzalez
19:44detective masson reopens the case and begins collecting dna from known suspects using what is
19:49known as a buccal swab a buccal swab refers to a swabbing in the mouth of the buccal mucosa which
19:56is inside the mouth your epithelial or skin cells are in there and we just take a swab of it and you
20:03can just use a sterile swab that looks like a q-tip and we can swab that and we can process that for dna
20:09something that everybody has it's very easy it's not intrusive or invasive to take that particular swab
20:15it is used a lot in law enforcement every time we are taking a buccal swab we're using it for dna
20:21purposes it is probably one of the fundamentals of dna collection is going to be a buccal swab because
20:27you either need that buccal swab to eliminate somebody which is huge right you still want to
20:31eliminate the innocent or if you have multiple suspects you'd like to take your number of five and
20:37narrow it down to two or one and it's very simple simple to use you don't have to be a forensic
20:43technician to do it investigator can use it a patrol officer can collect a buccal swab and then it's
20:49just saved in when you need it they were able to exclude some people they had developed some potential
20:57suspects detective masson reaches out to esther's sister after learning she may hold new and disturbing
21:06information about a possible suspect the lead i had with banning station was elizabeth and she named
21:17the suspect that suspect person of interest told her that he would do the same thing that he did to esther
21:26gonzalez her sister i wanted to get every detail of what she had because i wanted to make sure we're on
21:35the right track of what was going on so i talked to her she gave me some information we did some research
21:41on that information it took several weeks to track down people to get things in order and then we decided
21:50okay let's do a pretext phone call with the person of interest
21:59she was reading off a script script said talk about your sister the murder of your sister um you know
22:07why would he say that to you she confronted that person and asked why did you kill esther and the person
22:15got angry got very angry and was adamant i did not kill her and he hung up
22:33so from there i was able to talk to a couple other detectives and got their opinions um expert
22:41opinions with what i've worked before in the past i had enough to put a search warrant together
22:47to get that person's dna and also fingerprints because we wanted to um exclude them from another
22:54murder case that happened after 1979. i had that made sure i did my homework on that my research on
23:02him and i knew he was going to court he was going to court for a unrelated matter so i ended up
23:09going to court with him and i confronted him and i said listen i got a search warrant i need to talk
23:14to you he agreed to go back to the banning station with the detectives and then we sat down and talked
23:20to him he was adamant that he did not kill esther gonzalez he was adamant he got angry
23:28i said how was she found and he described for us how esther was found he described the crime scene
23:40i asked him if you weren't involved why are you describing all this well someone told me this
23:50but he never never said who we asked him several times well who told you this i can't remember i can't
23:55remember who told me i remember someone saying how she was killed and the matter she was killed and
24:01how she was found but i i i don't know who told me and the more we pressed him the more he became
24:07defiance and it got to the point where i was like okay i don't want him to to say i don't want to talk
24:13to you guys anymore or refuse to talk to us or or or say i want an attorney so i kind of backed off a
24:19little bit on him took him to the polygraph and he failed the polygraph
24:28so i confronted him again another detective that was with me from our unit from our central
24:33homicide unit also confronted him also and he refused he refused to admit that he did anything
24:41and he said i didn't do anything i'm done just take me back to you on banning so we took him back to
24:48banning and i submitted his dna to be compared to what we had at the crime scene and they excluded him
24:59so we're back to square one from there my assignment helping the banning station was done and they were
25:08going to continue working the case because they wanted to continue working the case so i said if
25:14there's anything else new or anything else comes up give me a call and we'll go we've never recontacted
25:19ever again so i closed out the case then after robert masson investigator lester harvey picked up the
25:27case we had been using a private dna lab at the time called sorenson and so lester had sent several
25:34items out for testing the cold case team has hit a dead end and the investigation has run out of leads
25:42once again at that time the cold case unit was being run out of a different location was still
25:48attached to the to the sheriff's office at that time and then it ultimately ended up being dissolved
25:54and uh and everybody you know the cold case investigators were sent to different investigative
25:59positions within the department but decades later a new breakthrough forensic technique blows the case
26:07wide open
26:19in 1979 the body of 17 year old esther gonzalez was discovered off highway 243 near banning in southern
26:26california over the years investigators revisited the case and in 2002 a cold case team entered the
26:35suspect's dna into codis unfortunately to no avail now more than four decades after esther's death a
26:44groundbreaking forensic technique offers renewed hope investigative genetic genealogy
26:50forensic genealogy is taking a dna sample where we have a sample we don't know who it belongs to
26:59and then using dna samples that have been uploaded into public databases such as gedmatch or some of
27:05those other ones compared to see if we can find a relationship between people and when we're looking
27:11at these relationships we're looking at family relationships to see who is related to whom and so
27:17so many people have uploaded their dna into commercial dna websites or databases but that dna
27:24can be compared to dna from the crime scene looking to see if we can establish a family relationship if
27:30you can establish that someone has similar dna to someone else in their family that's a way to generate
27:35a lead when you find a match then that in turn would generate another lead possibly for an investigator
27:42they could go question that person look at that person's story a family tree especially for people
27:49who do ancestry it's a picture as it were of how we came from at the top of your tree would be your
27:56grandparents and then from your grandparents would be a listing of your grandparents children like say
28:01your parents put in there then the next level under that would be a listing of all of the children
28:06from that particular marriage and each one of those children's children and so on so it builds the
28:10family tree it shows the linkages between people in a family tree you're going to see who is married
28:15to who when most often so you've got dates and times and then you have names quite often in many family
28:22trees they'll put um the maiden name of the of the wife in there as well so that gives you the maternal
28:28at least a name that you can trace back to so it's a way of being able to trace your roots
28:33this tech is very influential in law enforcement this is how law enforcement is able to generate
28:43leads leads that they didn't previously have in this particular case with esther gonzalez this is
28:49what they had they only had clothing that had nothing else they didn't have fingerprints
28:53this is in the days before before cell phones we couldn't quote ping a cell phone to see whose cell
28:58phone had been there there was not a camera surveillance system anywhere so all they had was dna
29:04in order for this but while they had the dna in 79 they had to wait for the technology to catch up
29:09and forensic genealogy dna right the that didn't become available the first case i believe was
29:15actually in 2011 but the case that everybody knows about is the golden state killer which was 2018
29:22which is considered the very beginning first case and since then a lot of cold cases are being
29:28revisited because now we we have this tool that we didn't have before so you know dna is subjected
29:35you it you must have a to compare to b so if you have a suspect dna and you run it through the database
29:42codis and you have no match which means it comes back to nobody you're left with nothing and you're just
29:49waiting until somebody puts that dna somewhere well with this forensic genealogy so many people have
29:55put their dna into public websites and now that we know that we can go down the y line the father's
30:01parent line to see who matches up and find possible suspects that's huge and that's a lot of closure for
30:07a lot of people when i first was assigned to our cold case unit there was an investigator there he
30:17was a master investigator named randy thomas and randy was very good at at investigative genetic
30:24genealogy and so he targeted ester's case for investigative genetic genealogy randy thomas found
30:33all the evidence so he went through put a tremendous amount of work in locating evidence making sure
30:38everything was together and making sure that you know her clothing was still uh was still you know good
30:44and still could be tested and so he started doing some research and he found that that ester that the
30:50uh the male dna that was was left behind by her killer was insufficient at the time to do the
30:58investigative genetic genealogy with recent advances in forensic science experts are able to extract the
31:06killer's dna and create a profile suitable for genetic genealogy analysis dna it's moving so
31:14quickly we required large amounts of sample for dna and usually it was something you could see and now
31:19we've gotten to this point where we're using this minuscule right we're washing items to see if
31:23there's any little bits of dna that you can't even see there's a new technology uh where you are where
31:29the item can be washed uh it's much like using a rug cleaning machine where high pressure water is
31:36hit onto a surface and that water is vacuumed up and then forced through a filter so it concentrates
31:42the dna and then the dna can be processed by a dna analyst to develop a profile since 2006 the rapid
31:49dna act was actually signed by the united states government right and so dna profiles can now be
31:55generated within 90 minutes specific samples but you can still generate a profile and say yes this
32:01person is related to this person or they are not in this case her underwear were sent a vaginal smear
32:09was sent because in the case of a homicide like this they're always going to do a sexual assault kit
32:14on the victim a piece of cotton was sent that was found and they also sent a beer can
32:21in this particular case they had a y str which is along the male chromosome so going back to our dna dna
32:35is women we are known as xx chromosomes men are xy so the y goes along the male lineage from father to son
32:43to all male children and so in this particular one they um they took that dna they generated some leads
32:51that led the investigators to determine who their suspect might be the matches all lead to one man
33:00lewis randolph williamson or randy the man who called 911 back in 1979 randy was cleared as a suspect at
33:09the time by passing a polygraph test but the dna hits put him back under scrutiny we knew that was
33:16just the beginning now now that cold case had just become an active homicide case
33:26there was an individual by the name of jack who happened to be a friend of randy's and he remembered
33:31receiving a phone call from randy there was an area out in banning where the kids of that age and i
33:36say kids the teenagers the 17s the 20 year old would go hang out and party and drink called the oak tree
33:43and jack reports that he had had a phone call from randy about being out there so in the phone call jack
33:52said that randy told him he had been out partying with esther out at the oak tree and jack says he
33:57actually asked randy did you have anything to do with her death and he had said no but it just never really
34:02sat right with him reading about his history and finding out what kind of individual he was
34:12and by accounts of people who were near and dear to him particularly family members ex-wife in particular
34:19randy was a very volatile individual he would berate his children and he was just was not a very happy
34:26individual but he managed to go through life without bringing too too much attention to himself
34:34when the sheriff's office interviewed his ex-wife she was only married to him a short time
34:40he used to routinely beat the heck out of her slap her around held a gun to her head two or three times
34:47threatened to kill her randy was very abusive a very violent man had beat her severely multiple times
34:56and then when she was pregnant with her youngest son randy had beaten her so bad broken several ribs
35:03broken her jaw and she was in the hospital being treated for those injuries when she found out she
35:07was pregnant and so uh she basically after that she went home uh got her other her her she had another
35:14son who i think was a year or two at the time collected him and then left randy and ultimately ended up
35:20moving out of the state he was not a fun person to be around at least if you're a woman
35:29detectives launch a search for randy williamson but almost immediately they hit an unexpected
35:34obstacle she was able to give us information about randy's parents investigators were able to contact
35:43appearance and ask about randy well randy died
35:50investigators learn that randy williamson had been living in florida where he died of natural causes
35:56back in 2014. when the case was in its early stages randy was identified but there was no
36:07no dna samples or any any physical samples collected from randy williamson so that makes things very very
36:16hard because without his sample comparing evidence to his sample is a very very tall order so what do we do
36:28from there with williamson deceased detectives turn to one final tool familial dna testing
36:47detectives in 2023 are working to solve the brutal 1979 rape and murder of 17 year old ester gonzalez in
36:55banning california they believe they've identified their suspect randy williamson but he died in 2014.
37:03to confirm if he's the killer investigators turn to a powerful forensic tool familial dna testing
37:10familial dna is dna that comes from your immediate family and it's used in investigations when we have to
37:19to ask a sibling to come in for us to help us or a child come in to help us to either
37:27exclude someone or help us say that this person is the person that we're trying to identify
37:34in this particular case since randy himself was no longer with us we still didn't know he was the
37:40suspect so we had to reach out to his adult son to ask can we use your dna to either exclude or include your father
37:49and so the adult son agreed the investigative genetic genealogy is almost basically like the
37:56polygraph exam it's just going to be an investigative tool we still have to use the dna that was found
38:02we still have to get dna in this case his son volunteered to provide a sample so we got that and
38:08then we sent that off to sorenson who had developed the ystr profile we sent off the son's dna to the
38:16california state lab we know sending things to them it's going to take a while it's a state
38:21run laboratory and so it's hard for them to get the results so quick like a private lab would
38:29the lab results come back and confirm randy williamson's son as a close familial match to the
38:35suspect dna
38:39we know that we have that male dna profile
38:40dna profile if we don't have anything else then having having the offspring having that male
38:46offspring dna dna profile that's from the swab you know is a good thing to have but if we can get
38:52you know if we can get that person's actual dna that's obviously the best i just figured out what
38:57the heck i'm gonna i'm gonna call these folks and find out maybe maybe he's you know he's buried back
39:01there maybe we get a you know trip to florida go back there and and uh see sunny florida and see
39:06and see what we can you know what we can generate from this i called they were very helpful very
39:17nice once i explained the circumstances to them i was hoping that he would be buried somewhere we
39:21could exhume him get a bone sample and develop his dna profile from that bone sample and so once i
39:27learned he'd been cremated it was kind of kind of deflating it seems like the investigation has hit a
39:34dead end but detective corey uncovers one final critical detail and then she says at the time of
39:41his autopsy we collected a vial of blood and i'm like okay really i said well that's good and she
39:47goes you're in luck because we're like two days away from destroying it and uh because it had been
39:5410 years she said we destroy everything out we destroy you know the samples after 10 years and so
39:59i'm like oh okay fantastic couldn't believe that they were just a couple of days away from destroying
40:04that sample i was like oh thank heavens that they still had it so then i contacted a detective out
40:11of broward county uh sheriff's office i sent him uh basically my you know affidavit and first search
40:17work because we're only sworn peace officers in california so i sent him the circumstances of the
40:22case and so he obtained a search warrant for me went to science care uh service search warrant and they
40:28were able to send that vial of blood out to california department of justice and so they were able to
40:33use that vial of blood develop randy's dna profile and then match that to the male dna that was found
40:39on the vaginal swab so it all worked out we were able to confirm that the dna did belong to randy williamson
40:51the next step after identifying who the suspect was in this case since there was nothing to do with
40:58randy since he was no longer here with us and he has debt is notifying the family and letting them know
41:04that it was over that we have finally found someone and there was a suspect and that they can finally
41:12have closure and knowing who killed esther what i do know is speaking to elizabeth on a regular basis for
41:23a period of time not an extended period of time but um she and any of her caring family members were
41:33ready for whatever the outcome was i think they were all in a good place in terms of how
41:41the investigation played itself out did it do some irreparable hurt and damage to the family particularly
41:49elizabeth absolutely absolutely just numbing what she and her family went through but in knowing that
42:00there was resolve some resolve put to the case i think that really helps the family out a lot because
42:07on the night that esther disappeared you know there were a lot of family matters that were going on
42:15you know and so when esther left the house i'm sure the parents the family were probably asking
42:23themselves lots and lots of questions or maybe even beating themselves for how things went when esther
42:30left because esther wasn't happy when she walked away from the house and never ever came back
42:34so that's hard that's very very hard
42:36i think closure is a terrible word i really really do and i hear that put out and i've actually talked
42:49to so many family members who have been victims of lost loved ones and there never is closure you can't
43:00tell me that just because um a killer or killers have been identified that all's well these folks are going
43:10to have to continue with their journey of rebuilding and repairing their emotional gateways that are never
43:19ever going to be closed so i don't believe closure plays a part in this i believe that this
43:24identifying a killer just helps them establish another platform to work through that's that's all i
43:35think thanks to the careful work of investigators in 1979 the case was never truly cold they did an
43:44amazing job because they packaged that evidence they documented that evidence and they took care of that
43:49evidence even knowing that they didn't have the technology right so what they the way they handled
43:55it the care that they gave that case in 1979 is what led to the final conviction in 2024 because that dna
44:03evidence would have been gone oh that's all they had and in 79 we didn't have dna so the investigators
44:10on that case did an amazing job thinking future forward that someday maybe technology will catch up and we can
44:16we can solve this case and bring some sort of closure to the family and justice for the victim
44:22they did a great job photographs talking to people reading the reports going through
44:26the interviews i mean they worked it hard and they they did a they did a phenomenal job
44:32through the relentless efforts of the riverside county regional cold case homicide team
44:37coupled with the power of dna science the case is finally closed my one big takeaway lesson is not
44:44even forensic genealogy is just don't give up just keep persevering in reading the case files there was
44:50an area where it talked about one of the samples was too small to run for that particular technology
44:55so they decided to save that sample until technology caught up so it is a cold case like esther's is an
45:02exercise in patience you just have to wait until technology catches up with you
45:06genealogy now it's just great it's brought a tool to law enforcement that is just going to help
45:18solve a lot of crime a lot of a lot of crime a lot of homicides um it's just the time of getting all
45:26that together that's what the big part of is putting the case together you know reading the reports going
45:33out interviewing um the witnesses um people of interest getting all the evidence packing it up
45:41send it to the lab right extracting the dna from there and the cost it's not cheap so the cost plays
45:49a big part of it too but genealogy itself i think it's it's a great tool and i and as time goes on
45:59it's just even going to get better
46:29so
46:44you
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