Justice is rarely a straight line. Sometimes it looks more like a 40-year circle that starts on a cold Thanksgiving night in Rochester and ends with a graying man in a Florida doorway.
The story of Wendy Jerome and Timothy Williams is basically a masterclass in how much the world changed between 1984 and 2024. Back then, "DNA" wasn't a word you'd hear on the nightly news. Families didn't track their ancestry with spit-kits. And 14-year-old girls could walk a few blocks to a friend's house without their parents' hearts being permanently lodged in their throats.
Honestly, Wendy’s story is heartbreakingly simple. She left her house on November 22, 1984, around 7:00 PM. Her goal? Dropping off a birthday card for her best friend, Susan Kellar. She had an 8:00 PM curfew. She never made it back.
Her body was found later that night behind School 33 on Webster Avenue. She’d been brutally raped and beaten to death. For the next 36 years, her mother, Marlene Jerome, lived with a hole in her life that no amount of time could fill.
The science of the long game
For decades, the case of Wendy Jerome was a classic "cold case." The Rochester Police Department (RPD) had evidence—specifically a semen sample—but they had nothing to compare it to. In the 80s, if you weren't already in a database, you were a ghost.
Then came familial DNA testing.
💡 You might also like: Air Pollution Index Delhi: What Most People Get Wrong
You've probably heard of how they caught the Golden State Killer. This was New York's version. Instead of looking for a direct 1:1 match in the FBI’s CODIS database, investigators used a newer technique. They looked for relatives.
Basically, they search for people who share enough DNA with the killer to be a sibling, a child, or a cousin. By building a family tree backward from the DNA found at the crime scene, they eventually landed on Timothy Williams.
Who is Timothy Williams?
In 1984, Williams was 20 years old. He lived right in Wendy's neighborhood. In fact, police actually interviewed him shortly after the murder. He was a person of interest, but without a confession or a witness, they couldn't hold him.
He didn't stick around Rochester to see how the investigation unfolded. He moved to Melbourne, Florida. He got married. He lived a life. For 36 years, he was just another guy in the suburbs, while the Jerome family was stuck in 1984.
When investigators finally knocked on his door in 2020, they said he knew exactly why they were there. One of the most chilling details from the trial was what Williams allegedly said to himself over and over after his arrest: "I never should have opened the effing door."
📖 Related: Why Trump's West Point Speech Still Matters Years Later
The trial that almost didn't happen
Getting Timothy Williams into a courtroom wasn't the end of the struggle. The legal path was a mess.
His first trial in November 2023 ended in a mistrial. Why? Juror misconduct. It was a crushing blow for Marlene Jerome, who was by then in her 70s. The judge was reportedly furious, telling the jury they had ignored every instruction they were given.
But the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office didn't blink. They went back to the drawing board for a retrial in early 2024.
This time, the jury didn't miss. On March 8, 2024, Timothy Williams was found guilty of three counts of second-degree murder. Because of the statute of limitations in place at the time, he couldn't be charged for the rape, but the murder convictions carried the weight the family needed.
Why this case changed New York law
This wasn't just another conviction. The Timothy Williams case was the first time in New York State history that a conviction was secured using familial DNA testing.
👉 See also: Johnny Somali AI Deepfake: What Really Happened in South Korea
It was a proof of concept. It showed that the "act of God" technology—as some investigators called it—could actually withstand the rigors of a courtroom defense. It also highlighted the agonizing wait families endure.
At the sentencing on April 17, 2024, Justice Alex Renzi handed down the maximum: 25 years to life.
Marlene Jerome finally got to speak her piece. She looked at the man who had been a free man for 36 years and told him, "I'm so glad you opened the effing door."
Key takeaways and what this means for the future
The resolution of the Wendy Jerome case offers a few concrete insights into how cold cases are being handled in the 2020s:
- Evidence preservation is everything: The reason Williams is in prison today is that RPD investigators in 1984 did their jobs perfectly. They collected and preserved biological evidence at a time when they couldn't even imagine the technology that would eventually analyze it.
- The "Privacy vs. Justice" debate is settled (mostly): Critics often argue that familial DNA searches infringe on the privacy of innocent relatives. However, New York courts have now ruled this practice constitutional, setting a massive precedent for other cold cases in the state.
- Cold case units need more than just tech: Technology is a tool, but it requires personnel. As RPD officials noted, they have rooms full of cold cases, but the bottleneck is often the "man-hours" required to chase these genetic leads.
If you’re following a cold case or are part of a family looking for answers, the best next step is to advocate for familial DNA authorization in your specific jurisdiction. While many states allow it, the bureaucratic hurdles remain high. Supporting legislative efforts to fund specialized cold case task forces ensures that the "Wendy Jeromes" of the world aren't forgotten just because the calendar flipped.