DNA links inmate to 1986 South Carolina murder of Chelsie Moss

Modern DNA testing did what 1986 investigators could not: it turned a preserved homicide file into a murder charge. Greenville County detectives used forensic work on evidence from the death of 18-year-old Chelsie Yvonne Moss to link the case to 64-year-old Ronnie Lee Williams, who is already serving a life sentence for an unrelated 1989 murder conviction.

Moss’s body was found on April 7, 1986, in woods off Fair Street and Kerns Avenue in Greenville. The death was ruled a homicide caused by blunt force trauma, and the case went cold for decades because investigators then had far fewer forensic tools than they do now.

The Greenville County Cold Case Unit reopened the investigation in February 2023, and after roughly three and a half years of work, detectives said they developed probable cause through DNA testing at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s lab. Williams, who is housed at Tyger River Correctional Institute in Spartanburg County, was charged with murder in connection with Moss’s death.

That arrest shows how much cold-case work now depends on the durability of evidence and the reach of modern lab systems. SLED says its Forensic Services Laboratory is a full-service crime lab for agencies across South Carolina, and its DNA casework uses STR-PCR testing on evidentiary samples. The agency also says its DNA database can generate CODIS hits that create investigative leads across jurisdictions, the kind of breakthrough that can finally connect a decades-old scene to a suspect already in custody on another matter.

Investigators said the arrest allowed them to notify Moss’s mother after 40 years and give the family the answer they had been waiting for. Sgt. Jason Cox and other members of the sheriff’s office emphasized that the cold case unit stayed committed to Moss despite the passage of time, even as the file sat dormant for years.

Greenville County deputies still are gathering information, and they said anyone who knew Moss or saw her in 1986 should contact Crime Stoppers of Greenville at 23-CRIME. WYFF also reported that Moss was known to frequent the Pendleton Street and West End areas of Greenville, details that may help fill in the last gaps around her movements before she was killed.

Williams now awaits a bond hearing on the new charge. For a case that once seemed beyond reach, the evidence preserved from 1986 finally spoke, and it pointed straight to an inmate already locked up for another killing.