More than 40 years ago, a body was discovered along the side of a dirt road near Lake Dorr in Altoona.
For Detective Zachary Williams of the Lake County Sheriff's Office, being handed a case file of a cold case passed down through generations of LCSO homicide detectives was a daunting task he was ready to face.
“This case, and so many of our cases, so many detectives have put so much effort into this," Williams said. “I was in a fortunate enough position to push this closer to the finish line.”
Beginning in 2023, the LCSO started working with Othram, a DNA lab doing genetic testing out of Texas, to identify "Judy Doe."
Othram worked alongside the LCSO for a year, conducting genetic genealogy testing.
“It’s terribly hard to work a homicide investigation if you don’t know who they are," said David Mittelman, CEO of Othram.
Through trial and error, the two entities narrowed down the identity of Judy Doe to match that of a missing Arkansas teenager, Rebecca Sue Hill.
Hill went missing, and her body was found on April 18, 1984, off a dirt road near Lake Dorr in Altoona.
Williams was the one who called Hill's siblings, who had been thought dead in Arkansas.
“Speaking with the family and giving them that little bit of closure that, in this case, they didn’t know that they needed, it’s been a phenomenal experience," Williams said.
According to the sheriff's office, remains found in Little Rock, Arkansas, were misidentified by Hill's father, although her siblings disagreed at the time.
“More than likely, it was just for closure for the family, to move onto the next chapter," Williams said. “It led to our remains not being identified for 40 years.”
So it was a surprise to her family when they got the call from the Lake County Sheriff's Office. Her brother, Eddie Hill, said the last words his sister said to him were, "Please don't leave me," before he left for the military.
"As a big brother, you know that hurts," Hill said. "Now, 40 years later, I get kicked in the gut again knowing that this is her."
He doesn't know what brought his sister to Lake County or even to the state.
"We don't know how she got to Florida; we don't know when she got to Florida or anything like that. We don't know why," Hill said.
Now that the remains have been identified, Williams said he feels confident naming a person of interest in her case: Michael Ronning.
Ronning, a convicted murderer and suspected serial killer had told prosecutors he had information about a body found in Lake County but had requested the death penalty not to be considered in exchange for telling investigators, Williams said.
He would eventually die in prison.
“He was in Lake County at the time of Rebecca’s death. He was stopped by the Umatilla Police Department a day before her body was discovered," Williams said. “From what we can tell, he left the area of Lake County within about 10 days of the body being found.”
“All of those things, circumstantially, do lead us to look at him.”
Now begins the process of working with the Little Rock Police Department to gather more information about Hill and how she could have connected with Ronning, with the hope being to close the decades-old case.
Hill says they're working to find a resting place for his sister.
"Now that we know what's happened to her, we hope we can lay her at rest and at peace. I just wish I was there to help her," he said.
With one person identified, there are still many families out there hoping for answers.
“There’s upwards of 1,000 people, just like this young girl, that are yet to be identified," Mittelman said. "It’s been a struggle to identify them in the past due to limitations of existing technology. But there’s new forensic technology available.”
“We’re really eager to get this deployed more broadly in Florida.”
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