The cold case murder of 82-year-old Elizabeth Wasson has been solved after authorities said preserved DNA collected from the 1992 crime scene was recently traced back to “notorious” serial killer Cesar Barone.
Barone is accused of murdering Wasson in her Hillsboro, Oregon, home, where she was found dead on September 23, 1992, according to a Monday, February 11, news release issued by the Washington County District Attorney’s Office.
Wasson “was beloved by friends and family” and known locally as “the neighborhood Avon Lady,” the district attorney’s office said.
She was also the widow of a pastor and was described by the district attorney’s office as “a pillar of her community.”
A few years after Wasson was killed, Barone was convicted of killing four women in 1995, and sentenced to death, according to the office.
In 2009, he died behind bars, the district attorney’s office said.
In addition to the four murders, he had been accused of sexually assaulting and strangling “three other women who survived the attacks,” according to the office.
Although investigators previously suspected Baron had killed Wasson, the case went cold because detectives could not definitively prove he committed the murder, the district attorney’s office said.
Nearly three decades later, in 2023, Hillsboro Police Department Detective Megan Townsend revisited the murder case, according to authorities.
A break in the reinvigorated investigation came after Townsend turned over evidence from the 1992 crime scene to the Oregon State Police Forensic Laboratory for further analysis, the district attorney’s office said.
Lab technicians lifted the DNA of a man — ultimately identified as Barone — from a piece of the preserved evidence, according to officials.
“For years, this family lived without answers,” Detective Townsend said in a statement. “Today, we’re finally able to give them the truth they deserved from the beginning. Our thoughts remain with them, and we honor the life of Elizabeth Wasson by ensuring this case is no longer left in silence.”
According to Washington County detectives who visited Barone before he died on death row, they learned during their yearslong investigation that he spent his childhood in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and that his legal name had formerly been Adolph James Rode, The Oregonian previously reported.
Before later changing his name at the age of 26, Barone had been accused of raping his stepmother, assaulting his grandmother, and raping and murdering a 71-year-old neighbor, according to the newspaper.
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He served seven years in a Florida prison for the neighbor’s killing, the newspaper reported.
Barone later moved to Washington County, Oregon, after serving in the U.S. Army, according to The Oregonian. He went on to allegedly attack and kill even more women.
“While many years have passed, we hope this result brings some closure to the victim’s family and to the community,” Washington County Chief Deputy District Attorney Allison Brown said in a statement on the closure of the Wasson murder case. “This office remains dedicated to delivering justice for victims and their loved ones, no matter how much time has passed.”
