It took half a century for the truth to emerge. A murder case in Georgia, in the deep south of the United States of America, was solved 51 years after the crimes thanks to DNA analysis. The news is currently getting plenty of coverage in major American media outlets following confirmation from Cobb County District Attorney Flynn Broady’s office.
Debbie Lynn Randall, a 9-year-old girl in the third grade, was kidnapped on January 13, 1972 as she walked home from a laundromat. Her lifeless body was found 16 days later: she had been raped and then strangled. At this point, the investigation did not lead to anything concrete and it was not possible to find the murderer responsible for the horrific violence.
The investigators followed up on hundreds of leads in vain. However, over the decades, forensic technology and advanced DNA analysis have made great strides. During initial investigations in 1972, investigators found a hair and a piece of cloth. An initial test in 2001 led to the exclusion of several suspects.
Further tests were then carried out in 2015, 2019 and finally in 2022. And the turning point came as a surprise: it was possible to identify Debbie Lynn Randall’s murderer. She was killed by William Rose, a 24-year-old who took his own life in 1974. The suspect’s body was exhumed for a DNA test, which dispelled all doubts: they found a 100 percent match with the small piece of cloth found with the remains of Debbie Lynn. Now the killer has a name: The little girl’s parents will never know who killed their daughter because they have both been dead for some time.
The murdered girl’s brother, Melvin, was present at the press conference on Monday announcing the breakthrough in the case. “I wish my mother was here, but I know she is in heaven now. It’s finally over, we just want to say we thank you all for what you did to make this day possible,” he said. Ron Alter, a cold case investigator for the District Attorney’s Office, doesn’t believe Rose knew Debbie. He had family members who lived in the neighborhood, so he probably traveled these streets a lot. “He saw her alone and kidnapped her,” Alter said. Then the horror.
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