Illinois man charged in 1993 Madison County murder after DNA breakthrough
DNA from a 1993 scene finally pointed Madison County investigators to Albert Lee Zigler, who is accused of beating Randy Gail Sperino and dumping her body in a field.
A 33-year-old murder that sat untouched for decades finally broke open when DNA from the scene linked investigators to Albert Lee Zigler, a 70-year-old Madison County man now charged in the killing of Randy Gail Sperino. Prosecutors filed charging papers on May 22, 2026, and announced two counts of first-degree murder on May 26, turning one of the county’s longest-running cold cases into a live courtroom fight.
Sperino’s nude body was found in November 1993 in unincorporated Madison County near Granite City, along Hanfelder Road, bludgeoned to death in a field just outside the area where she had last been seen. Sheriff Jeff Connor said she was seen alive around 8 p.m. that night getting into a vehicle, then was found about 11:45 p.m. She had been visiting her father when she disappeared, and her son, Wes Sperino, said the arrest brought a measure of closure after more than three decades of waiting.
Investigators say the case moved only after modern forensic genealogy finally got a clean look at evidence that had been sitting in evidence storage for years. About a year ago, Madison County partnered with Othram, a Texas lab that specializes in genealogy-based DNA work, and sent over decades-old evidence recovered from the scene. One report said investigators had run numerous DNA tests on samples from the killing since 1998, but none had produced the name that finally surfaced in this round of testing.
Prosecutors said Zigler had not been on their radar before the breakthrough. CBS Chicago reported that Othram identified Zigler, who lived in a mobile home park close to where Sperino’s body was found. That proximity is now one of the case’s more unsettling details, because investigators say the man accused of the killing was living within reach of the crime scene while the file remained cold.
The alleged sequence of events is stark. Investigators say Zigler admitted to picking up Sperino, beating her with a metal bat, and dumping her body afterward. Court records show he already had a first court appearance, and a detention hearing was scheduled as the case moved into the next phase. For a case that spent 33 years in the dark, the DNA hit did not just reopen the file. It gave prosecutors a name, a path, and a version of what they now believe happened in a field near Granite City in 1993.
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