Galveston cold case solved, DNA and fingerprints name 1981 suspect

Lois Marshall’s murder was solved at last, but the ending is the kind true-crime readers know too well: the suspect is dead, the evidence finally spoke, and the courtroom never got its turn.

Galveston police said Tuesday that William Clifford Lawrence, a Texas City man who died of natural causes on April 19, 2026, was the suspect in Marshall’s killing. Marshall was 22 when she was found dead on September 11, 1981, inside her home on Avenue O near 23rd Street in Galveston. Her injuries told the story of a brutal attack, with investigators documenting blunt-force trauma, sexual assault, binding, gagging and asphyxiation. Her official cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the head and asphyxiation.

The breakthrough came from evidence that had sat with the case for decades. Detectives resubmitted latent fingerprints from the scene in February 2025, and one print collected in 1981 matched Lawrence, who had never before been identified as a suspect. In March 2025, officers tried to interview him, but Lawrence declined to speak with investigators or even hear why they were there. Police then obtained a search warrant for his DNA sample.

That sample changed the case from a lingering mystery into a posthumous identification. On March 27, 2025, the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory confirmed that DNA from the sexual assault matched Lawrence. Investigators also said additional DNA recovered from the bindings used during the crime was consistent with him. Galveston Police Chief Doug Balli said dogged police work and advances in DNA and fingerprinting technology solved the case, after detectives spent years pursuing leads and eliminating other potential suspects through fingerprint comparisons, blood typing and DNA testing.

The Galveston County District Attorney’s Office later documented probable cause for a capital murder charge. But Lawrence died before charges could be filed, which means the case is officially cleared without an arrest, a trial or a verdict. For Marshall’s family, the name is finally attached to the crime that has shadowed them for more than four decades, but the legal reckoning that usually follows a cold-case solve never arrived.