Updated: 11/24/2009 10:51:58 PM
It's been 22 years since two West Knox County sisters were murdered inside their apartment.
But now, a new unit and new technology could heat up this cold case once again.
"Even if the suspects are dead and the victims are dead, it still brings closure to a case," said Det. Sgt. Perry Moyers, head of the cold case unit at the Knox County Sheriff's Office.
He's now taking on the decades-old homicide case involving Suzanne and Patricia Williams.
On Dec. 29, 1987, 40-year-old Suzanne and 37-year-old Patricia were found murdered inside their West Knoxville apartment. They lived at the Statesview Apartments, where the Mountainview Apartments complex now sits.
Suzanne was found nude on her bed. Her hands and feet were bound, and she had been raped and strangled with a window cord.
Patricia was found on the floor of her room. She was bound, gagged and strangled with a shoelace.
"There was an exterminator that came through to exterminate the apartment around 10 a.m. that morning and seen the girls laying there, but just didn't think they were dead, did his job and went home," Det. Moyers said.
Instead, the sisters' stepfather discovered their bodies later that night.
Soon, detectives came up with a list of nine suspects, all tied to Patricia or the former bar Doodles, once located where Makino Japanese Buffet is now on Kingston Pike.
"She would come in, get a drink, and sit at the bar, look around. She'd see somebody that appealed to her, a guy or something, and she usually wrote him a note that would say something like, 'Hey, I'm really shy.Would you like to buy me a drink,' or, 'Hey, you're the best-looking thing in the bar,' and she was a little bit more outgoing [than Suzanne]," Det. Moyers said.
Both sisters had multiple sclerosis, or MS, but that didn't slow down either of them.
Patricia had brought men home from the bar before, even when her sister didn't approve.
Witnesses gave officers a description of a bearded man they saw leaving Doodles with Patricia the night the sisters were killed, and that composite sketch was released to the public, but it never led to an arrest.
Detectives soon narrowed in on one suspect, someone who had dated Patricia before and had been in the apartment. There was no sign of forced entry, so detectives believed the sisters may have known their killer.
Years later, that suspect died of an overdose.
"They just never reached that level in their minds that this was the actual person that did it," Det. Moyers said. "They may have believed it, but they hadn't proved it to theirselves yet that he had done it, so that's what I'm trying to do now."
Two days after the murders, investigators found the sisters' abandoned car with items stolen from their home inside.
Detectives have now sent the evidence found there, along with evidence from the scene, to the state lab for new tests.
Det. Moyers is hopeful those results will give him new leads.
"Anything that we can come across that has the chance of being retested through new techniques and stuff, we're trying," he said.
After all, Det. Moyers says there are only two types of cases - open and solved. And he's ready to move this open case to the other category.
"Once the victim's dead, nobody speaks up for them like we do, so I'm their last voice, and as long as there's a chance to do something with it, it's always been the philosophy of this department - we never quit," he said.
If you have any information on the murders of Suzanne and Patricia Williams, you're asked to call the Knox County Sheriff's Office at 865-215-2243.
