Cops have finally solved the murder of an 18-year-old woman found naked on a riverbed in Washington state more than 30 years ago — although it’s too late to bring her killer to justice.
Tracy Whitney’s murderer, John Guillot Jr., was identified as a suspect in her 1988 slaying only two years ago — eight months after his death. Recent DNA testing finally confirmed his role in the case.
“It’s kind of an empty feeling because now we know who did it. … But we’ll never find out the true story of what actually happened,” said Whitney’s father, Ronald Whitney.
Tracy was last seen storming out of a Burger King in August 1988 after an argument with her friends. The next day, a fisherman stumbled upon her nude body in a gravel bed where the Puyallup and White rivers meet near Sumner, about 12 miles east of Tacoma.
Whitney was strangled and is believed to have been raped, officials said.
Her homicide stumped investigators for decades until new DNA evidence and genetic genealogy revealed Guillot as a suspect in 2022. But he was already dead, having passed away at age 65 eight months earlier, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office.
Further DNA testing recently confirmed Guillot was the killer, officials said.
“If John G. Jr. had been alive today, law enforcement would have probable cause to arrest,” Pierce County Sheriff’s Detective Lindsay Kirkegaard said. “From our standard, he was the suspect, and he would have been arrested for the crime.”
There were no known connections between Whitney and Guillot.
Guillot was also questioned in connection to the death of his girlfriend in 2010 and the death of his wife in 2020, although he was never charged in either of those cases.
Ronald Whitney told King5 News that he had been watching DNA technology advances lead to several cold cases being solved over the years, giving him hope that his daughter’s killer would eventually be found.
“When the Golden State Killer got busted, I said, ‘This is it, this is the break that we’ve been waiting for,’ ” he said of the technological gains.
Learning the identity of his daughter’s kiler has brought the family some closure, Ronald said.
But since Guillot is dead, the family will never learn the whole story, he added.
“In my head, I imagined that we’d be going to court, and I’d be sitting in the courtroom looking him in the eyes and watching him get sentenced to death or life in prison,” Whitney’s mother, Robin Whitney, told the outlet.
The heartbroken father said the pain of his daughter’s death still haunts him.
“It’s something that never leaves your mind, every day, I don’t think the grief will ever go away,” he said. “It’s the first thing I think about in the morning, it’s the last thing I think about at night.”
