California: A man who passed a lie detector test in 1979 clearing him in the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl was identified as her suspected killer

clearing him in the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl was identified as her suspected killer, authorities announced Wednesday.

Esther Gonzalez’s body was found in a snowpack off a highway near Banning, California, on Feb. 10, 1979, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release. She had been attacked and killed the previous day while she was walking from her parents’ house in Beaumont to her sister’s house in Banning, the district attorney’s office said.

The suspect was identified as Lewis Randolph “Randy” Williamson. He was found through forensic genealogy, the news release says. Williamson died in Florida in 2014.

Authorities determined that Gonzalez had been raped and bludgeoned to death, the district attorney’s office said. Her body was found by an unidentified man, whom deputies at the time described as argumentative.

The man, later identified as Williamson, told the deputies that he did not know whether the body was male or female, according to the news release. Days after he made the call, Williamson was asked to take a polygraph test.