Thirty-six years he lived as an exemplary father while carrying the secret of having raped and murdered a fourteen-year-old girl. The police had him in their files since 1984 without knowing it. How could a name that appeared in the original file remain invisible for three and a half decades?

In this episode, you will discover how familial DNA resurrected a cold case, how a trail of blood in a corner of Rochester led directly to the door of a killer who had been hidden in police records from day one, and why technology took forty years to solve what police intuition should have resolved in 1984.

Case Details
Victim: Wendy Jerome, 14 years old, student
Date: November 22, 1984
Location: Rochester, New York, United States
Status: Timothy Williams sentenced to 25 years to life, March 2024

- The name of Timothy Williams appeared in an anonymous report from 1984 accusing him of boasting about the murder, but he was never investigated at the time
- Timothy denied having lived in Rochester in 1984, but prison visit records and addresses directly contradict him
- The trail of blood led to three houses from where Timothy lived with his cousin on Rosewood Terrace, but without familial DNA, there was no way to connect him
- A 1992 sexual assault kit from a former girlfriend of Timothy, preserved for thirty years in a basement, provided the definitive evidence

Are you ready to discover how forty years of unanswered questions collapsed into a single DNA result?

unsolved crime Rochester, murder Wendy Jerome, familial DNA, delayed justice, cold case investigation, Timothy Williams, serial killer, forensic technology, unsolved cases New York, true crime Spanish podcast

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