() — More than 52 years after 16-year-old Pamela Lynn Conyers was strangled to death in central Maryland, authorities say they have identified a suspect in her murder with the help of genetic genealogy.
The suspect, whom police identified as Forrest Clyde Williams III, would have been 21 years old at the time of the murders. He died in Virginia, where he was originally from, in 2018 of “natural causes,” Anne Arundel County Police Lt. Jackie Davis said at a news conference Friday.
If Williams were alive today, he would have been charged with the murder, police said. Davis said authorities were able to find a mugshot of the suspect because he had been arrested multiple times in the early 1970s, after Pamela’s murder, for minor offenses, including acting “drunk and disorderly.”
Pamela, a high school student, disappeared on Oct. 16, 1970, after running an errand at a nearby mall, Davis told reporters.
An undated photo of Pamela Lynn Conyers, the teenager strangled half a century ago
His body was found four days later, a short distance from where authorities recovered his abandoned car less than 24 hours earlier. A medical examiner deemed his cause of death to be asphyxiation by strangulation and ruled his death a homicide, Davis added.
“She was just doing what most 16-year-old high school students were doing back then: living her life, making memories and spending precious moments with her family and friends. Just celebrating and enjoying the essence of her teenage years until her life was tragically and selfishly taken away,” said Anne Arundel County Police Chief Amal Awad.
“Pamela was never forgotten, nor will she be forgotten,” added the boss.
How Genetic Genealogy Helped
Police don’t believe Williams and the young Pamela met before the teen’s murder, Davis said.
Evidence collected at the crime scene during that time and evolved technology that didn’t exist decades ago helped authorities find the suspect, police said.
“FBI agents use the genetic genealogy to generate new leads, when other investigative methods have been exhausted,” said Thomas Sobocinski, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore office.
Genetic genealogy combines DNA evidence and traditional genealogy to find biological connections between people, and in recent years has helped detectives narrow down their lists of potential suspects in cold cases.
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“We used the DNA from the crime scene and its analysis to develop a profile,” Sobocinski said. “We then use publicly available information and databases to identify potential family members of a suspect or victim.”
Based on those results, investigators then try to create a kind of family tree and “work generationally down that tree until you get to someone who might fit the suspect’s age and gender profile,” Sobocinski added.
The officer said he did not want to elaborate on the process used in Pamela’s case to avoid compromising the ongoing investigation.
Though he offered no details, Sobocinski confirmed that investigators in the case had “obtained DNA samples from people” before finally identifying Williams as a suspect. But the police officer refused to identify who the samples were taken from or how they could have been related to Williams.
“When (Pamela) was murdered in 1970, there was no investigative genetic genealogy, there was no DNA analysis. The tools, both scientific and investigative, used to solve her murder have evolved,” she said. “This technique gives the FBI the opportunity to solve cases that would not have been solved otherwise.”
This is not a closed case, police say
Despite Friday’s announcement, police say this case is not closed and are still asking members of the public who may know something about the murder to come forward with that information.
“It is very important for me to say that detectives and investigators have not ruled out the possibility that another person or persons may be involved in Pam’s murder,” Davis told reporters. “So we have to protect the integrity of the investigation and any possible future prosecution.”
For this reason, Davis explained, the police have not shared specific details about the case and the crime scene.
Authorities also encouraged those who might have known Williams at the time of the murder to help shed light on how he and Pamela might have met.
