Federal authorities have identified a now-deceased serial rapist from Ohio as the man they believe raped and murdered two women in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park almost three decades ago
Nearly three decades after two young women were found with their throats slashed in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, federal authorities announced Thursday that they have identified a now-deceased serial rapist from Ohio as the person they believe was responsible for the killings.
The bodies of Julianne “Julie” Williams, 24, and her partner, Laura “Lollie” Winans, 26, were found bound and gagged at their campsite in the park in 1996. The killings sent a wave of fear through the LGBTQ+ community, but the FBI said during a news conference Thursday that there is no evidence that the women were targeted because of their sexual orientation.
The long-unsolved killings were reviewed by a new investigative team starting in 2021, said Stanley Meador, the Special Agent in Charge of the Richmond FBI office. Recently, a private lab pulled DNA from several pieces of evidence from the crime scene and sent the genetic profile to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, a database used by law enforcement agencies to match DNA to a criminal suspect.
They got a positive match to Walter “Leo” Jackson Sr., a convicted rapist originally from the Cleveland, Ohio, area.
