LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — A break in a 40-year-old murder case is finally giving one family a chance for closure.
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Lake County detectives said they found a body known as “Judy Doe” off a dirt road in Altoona back in the 1980s.
For years, the case remained cold, but in December, new DNA technology helped identify the victim as Arkansas teenager Rebecca Sue Hill.
According to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Hill went missing in 1981, but wasn’t in any national missing persons databases.
Detectives said that’s because family members had misidentified her when another body turned up in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1981 or 1982 shortly after Rebecca disappeared.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office said since 1984, multiple efforts were made to identify the remains of Judy Doe based off of skeletal recreations, dental records, and DNA. All of these efforts were unsuccessful.
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Then, in November of 2023, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office contracted Othram, Inc., a private laboratory that specializes in Forensic Genetic Genealogy, in an attempt to provide new leads or information.
With cooperation of Rebecca’s family, they were able to positively identify Rebecca Hill via that technology in December, 2024.
“It’s very difficult when we don’t know who the person is. Now that we know who she is, we’re able to go back through this case and figure out, what do we now know,” said Lake County Detective Zachary Williams.
Williams said suspected serial killer and convicted murderer; Michael Ronning is now a person of interest in Rebecca’s murder.
Ronning died while serving a life sentence in 2022, but detectives had started investigating Ronning in the early 2000s in connection to then Judy Doe’s death.
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According to Williams, Ronning was living in Lake County and was actually pulled over by Umatilla police just one day before Rebecca was found stabbed in the woods.
Investigators said Ronning left Lake County, within ten days of Rebecca’s murder and allegedly implied during a Dateline interview he knew something about the “Judy Doe” found in Altoona.
“All of these things circumstantially are pointing us back towards him,” said Williams.
For Rebecca’s surviving brother and sister, the break in the case has stirred up mixed emotions, since they believed Rebecca had been found years ago.
In an exclusive interview with Channel 9, Rebecca’s brother Eddie said he was extremely grateful to Lake County detectives, and believed there could soon be answers to unresolved questions including who murdered Rebecca, and how she ended up in Lake County.
“After 40 years we never thought we’d ever find out what happened to her,” said Eddie Hill, “We’re very hopeful we’ll get some answers.”
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