The FBI announced on Thursday that it had identified the suspect in the murder of a Unity College student and her girlfriend in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, in May 1996.
Laura “Lollie” Winans and Julianne “Julie” Williams were murdered at their campsite near the Skyland Resort. Winans, originally from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, was studying outdoor recreation at Unity College, and would have graduated that December. Williams, of St. Cloud, Minnesota, was a student at Carleton College in Minnesota. The couple met as interns in an outdoors program in Minnesota.
In an announcement Thursday, the FBI said it was able to identify the suspected killer after a wholesale review of the case. As part of the new investigation, which included “reassessing hundreds of leads and interviews,” a private lab was able to pull DNA from several items of evidence. The DNA was compared with the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System and matched with a buccal (inside of the mouth) swab containing the DNA of Walter Leo Jackson Sr.
“Those results confirmed we had the right man and finally could tell the victim’s families we know who is responsible for this heinous crime,” Stanley M. Meador, the FBI Richmond special agent in charge, said in the announcement.
Jackson was born on Nov. 2, 1947, and died in prison in March 2018 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. He was from the Cleveland area and had a lengthy criminal history, according to the FBI, including kidnapping, rapes and assaults. The FBI described him as a “serial rapist.”
He was known to visit Shenandoah National Park and frequently change vehicles, use temporary tags and alter license plates, according to the FBI.
Jackson is not the first suspect in the double murder case. In 2002, Darrell David Rice, of Maryland, was indicted for the crimes and charged with four counts of capital murder.
Rice had been convicted of trying to abduct a female bicyclist in Shenandoah National Park in 1997, the year after Winans and Williams were murdered, and had said the two “deserved to die because they were homosexuals,” then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference.
But prosecutors dropped their case against Rice in 2004 after a hair found at the crime scene was DNA-tested and found to belong neither to Rice nor the victims.
With the announcement identifying Jackson, a federal prosecutor expressed confidence that this time they had found the killer.
“After 28 years, we are now able to say who committed the brutal murders of Lollie Winans and Julie Williams in Shenandoah National Park,” U.S. Attorney Christopher R. Kavanaugh said on Thursday. “I want to again extend my condolences to the Winans and Williams families and hope today’s announcement provides some small measure of solace.”
