DNA match identifies suspect in 1995 Oregon cold case murder

Lane County investigators have finally put a name to the man who killed Joni Marie Grigsby, but the ending is painfully incomplete. The suspect, Roy C. Gomes, was dead long before detectives tied him to the 1995 homicide, leaving Grigsby’s family with a long-awaited answer and no chance of a trial.

Grigsby’s body was found a little after 9 p.m. on June 2, 1995, along the river outside Springfield, Oregon. She was 33 years old. Detectives ruled her death a homicide at the time, but the case drifted into the cold case file as leads dried up and forensic methods lagged behind what investigators can do today.

That changed in 2023, when crime-scene DNA was sent to an outside laboratory for testing. The results narrowed the suspect pool to a small handful of people, giving the Lane County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Team a workable path forward. The team, made up of retired law enforcement officers who donate their time and expertise, is funded through public donations and has long been built around patience, old files, and the hope that one overlooked piece of evidence can still break a case open.

Investigators then learned that one of the remaining suspects, Roy C. Gomes, had been shot and killed by Sacramento police on March 5, 2004. Sacramento police records say a West Sacramento officer saw Gomes at 5:28 p.m. walking on railroad tracks near the Sacramento River and the I Street Bridge. He was on parole at the time and was holding a 40-ounce glass beer bottle during the confrontation. Because Gomes was already deceased, detectives were able to use a DNA sample taken during his autopsy and compare it with the evidence from the Springfield scene. That comparison matched.

Lane County officials notified Grigsby’s family after the match confirmed Gomes as the killer, closing the case almost 31 years after the murder. Oregon State Police says its Cold Case Unit focuses on unsolved homicides and missing-person cases with actionable leads, forensic evidence, surviving witnesses, and complete historical records, a playbook that has helped crack other Oregon cold cases as well, including the Barbara Mae Tucker and Diana Kuhn cases.

For Grigsby’s loved ones, the case is solved in the narrowest sense possible. The name is known now, and the evidence finally speaks clearly, but the suspect who left her family waiting since 1995 is gone, and the courtroom ending will never come.