Decades after the murder of two women in Shenandoah National Park, a serial rapist is linked to their deaths

Nearly three decades after two women were found dead in a Virginia national park, their killer – a “serial rapist” who died in prison in 2018 – has been identified through forensic testing, the FBI said Thursday.

DNA tests have shown that Walter “Leo” Jackson Sr. killed 26-year-old Laura “Lollie” Winans and 24-year-old Julianne “Julie” Williams in Shenandoah National Park on May 24, 1996, the FBI’s Richmond field office and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia said in a joint statement on Thursday.

“After 28 years, we can now say who committed the brutal murders,” U.S. Attorney Christopher R. Kavanaugh said in the statement. “I want to express my condolences to the Winans and Williams families again and hope that today’s announcement provides some comfort.”

When the women did not return home as planned, their relatives called the National Park Service. Their bodies were found after an extensive search on June 1, 1996.

They were killed at their campsite near the Skyland Resort, the FBI said.

The case remained unsolved for years, and in 2021 a new FBI team was assigned to investigate the murders. Special agents, intelligence analysts and other FBI personnel re-evaluated hundreds of leads and interviews, the FBI said.

The team prioritized evidence from the crime scene and had it re-examined by an accredited private laboratory, the FBI said.

The private lab collected DNA from “multiple pieces of evidence” and with the help of Virginia State Police, the DNA profile was submitted to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, the FBI said. That resulted in a positive match to Jackson, a convicted serial rapist from Cleveland.

The FBI also compared evidence from the murders of Winans and Williams with a cheek swab that contained Jackson’s DNA, the FBI said.

“These results confirmed that we had the right man and could finally tell the victims’ families who was responsible for this heinous crime,” said Stanley M. Meador, special agent in charge of the FBI in Richmond.

Jackson, who was a painter, was an avid hiker known for visiting Shenandoah National Park, the FBI said. He died in March 2018 in jail in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, it said.

Jackson’s criminal record included kidnapping, rape and assault, the FBI said, noting that it also worked with Cleveland police and the Cuyahoga County District Attorney’s Office on the case.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com.