The Gruesome Murder of a Maryland High Schooler Solved After 52 Years

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It was announced on Friday that a case from more than 50 years ago in MILLERSVILLE, Maryland has been solved. Pamela Conyers, a high school student at the time, had gone missing from the local shopping mall and was later found strangled to death.

Detectives used DNA and genetics to find out the identity of a suspect, Forrest Clyde Williams III. He died from natural causes in 2018 so officials couldn’t ask him any questions about unsolved crimes. This has left many people living in a small community near Baltimore with more mysteries than answers.

Conyers went to a school pep rally and then drove to the shopping mall. Her family got worried because she never came back from running her errands. After four days, people found her dead body close to where she’d parked her car.

Police officials said they didn’t find any proof that Conyers knew her accused murderer. They also said that it’s still possible someone else was involved and so the case isn’t done yet. Federal and local officers praised detectives for their hard work searching for justice in this case for many years.

FBI Agent Tom Sobocinski said, “We have achieved a form of justice for Pamela Conyers and her family. Even when times changes and investigations progress, victims never get forgotten by law enforcement.”

He added that back in 1970 when Conyers was murdered, DNA analysis and Investigative Genetic Genealogy weren’t available.

When police from 1970 collected evidence from a crime scene, they weren’t sure what it was for. Recently, cold case detectives figured out a way to use the evidence in order to identify the suspect through genealogical databases that anyone can access. They used information from these databases to create a family tree and eventually find the person responsible: Williams. The cold case detectives aren’t saying which relatives of Williams’ led them to figure out who he is or how they did it step by step.

Sobocinski said that with all the new technology available, law enforcement officials can solve old and unsolved mysteries. This process has brought hope where there seemed to be no hope before. These genealogical investigations have changed how cold cases solved around the country. Some people are worried about the privacy issues of accessing public genealogical databases though.

County officials from Anne Arundel did not share many details about Williams. All they said was that he hadn’t been in trouble with the law much and had lived mostly in Virginia. When Conyers was killed, Williams was 21 years old.

When he was a teenager, Williams moved with his family to Maryland. He then later returned back to Virginia. Police had an old picture of him from the 1970s in which it showed he had been arrested for things such as being drunk or making too much noise. On the internet, there were no records about this arrest but it said that he got a ticket for fishing without permission in 1990.

No one answered the phone calls to people related to him on Friday.

According to his obituary, Williams had two children and many other family members.

The police chief said that if Williams was still alive, he would have been charged with killing Pamela Conyers.

The Conyers family asked for privacy.

Michael Golden, one of Conyers’ high school friends, attended a news conference with his yearbook. He said he was glad to have some closure but still felt confused. Inside the book was a photo of Conyers and Michael said that all their classmates had been trying for years to figure it out.

Golden, who was friends with Conyers after band practice, remembers when she went missing. He said that he can still picture the empty seat in their trigonometry class on Monday morning after her disappearance.

He said sadly, “I still feel really bad about her death. I got to live a long life but she didn’t–she’s going to be 16 forever.”

David Wells was a part of the community for a long time and his wife went to school with Conyers. He was in the Air Force back then when this case happened and he remembered getting letters from family members about this incident. Surprisingly, detectives did not think that it had anything to do with other unsolved cases of young women victims around the same period.

Officers declared that they do not think the Conyers case is connected to a murder that happened previously. This murder was about a Baltimore nun who disappeared from a shopping mall and was later found dead with serious injuries. It has been featured in a Netflix show called ‘The Keepers’. The investigation remains open even now.