'It's a relief': Modern DNA tests help police crack 75-year-old woman's cold-case homicide

Yahoo

11-02-2025

RIVIERA BEACH — For nearly three decades, Shatonda Stewart has lived with the question of whether the person who killed her grandmother would ever be found. Now she may have an answer.
On Feb. 10, Riviera Beach police announced that a cold-case investigation has led detectives to the man they believe to be responsible in the April 28, 1995, murder of 75-year-old Earnestine Mortimore.
Police and city officials announced that a grand jury indicted Willie Rogers on Jan. 30 in connection to Mortimore's death. He is facing a charge of first-degree murder.
Rogers, whose age was not available immediately available, is incarcerated in Alachua County in an unrelated case, Riviera Beach police said. It was not immediately clear when he will appear before a judge in Palm Beach County.
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Investigators say Mortimore was killed in an apparent burglary at her home on the 1400 block of West 36th Street, just south of the Lake Park town border.
At the time of her death, the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office ruled that she died of strangulation and multiple injuries due to blunt trauma.
Stewart said Monday's announcement has brought a sense of closure to the family.
"I just never thought the case would be solved, even though we deep down inside know what happened and why," she said. "It's a relief. We're happy."
Investigators said Rogers lived in Mortimore's neighborhood and, along with another man, was identified as a suspect by other neighbors during the initial stages of the investigation.
Detectives at the time interviewed both men and obtained DNA samples from them. Both men denied any involvement and were subsequently released.
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Within a couple of years, the case went cold as detectives were unable to collect any additional evidence against Rogers. Riviera Beach Police Chief Michael Coleman said Monday his department's cold-case unit reopened the case in 2023 using new leads in advancements in forensic technology.
The department created the unit in November 2022 to handle unsolved cases dating as far back as the 1960s.
"I want everyone to know in this community that as long as we have the resources and the means to follow up cases. We will continue to follow those cases and those leads in this agency" Coleman said. "And we're going to aggressively seek justice for the individuals who were victimized going back 30, 40, 50 years."
Cold-case Detective John MacVeigh said a blood draw collected from Rogers during the initial stages of the investigation gave detectives the evidence that would ultimately link him to the crime. MacVeigh, a former FBI special agent and Jupiter police officer, said blood draws were more common in the 1990s because of technology available at the time.
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"In 1995, DNA was brand new," he said. "They weren't necessarily doing mouth swabs because they did not know what that meant, so a lot of these types of cases, the only thing the labs could do was blood-type cases. Back then they were doing blood draws that they were going to test against anything they had at the scene."
In May 2023, detectives sent several pieces of evidence from the murder investigation to the Bode Forensic Technology lab in Virginia for further DNA testing. Just over a year later, DNA test results identified Rogers as the primary suspect.
Stewart said her grandmother helped to raise her and was often the one who would wake in the mornings to get her ready for school.
" 'The early bird gets the worm.' That's what she used to always tell us," Stewart said, recalling one of her grandmother's favorite sayings.
Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at [e-mail] and follow him on Twitter at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: DNA tests bring arrest in cold-case homicide of woman after 30 years