More than three decades after the body of a slain Washington woman was found in a riverbed, investigators have identified her suspected killer with the help of DNA technology.
Tracy Whitney was 18 years old when she vanished on August 28, 1988, after leaving a Burger King restaurant following an argument with friends.
The next day, fishermen found her nude body in a gravel bed right where the Puyallup and White Rivers meet.
Tracy had several blunt-force injuries and was believed to have been sexually assaulted. Her cause of death was asphyxia caused by strangulation and probable smothering. It was ruled a homicide and police took DNA swabs from her body.
Despite countless interviews with everyone who knew or had dated Tracy, Pierce County detectives were not able to link anyone to her murder.
In 2005, the suspect DNA found on her body was sent to a federal database, but no matches could be found and the case went cold.
Then in 2022, with the help of a grant offered by the WA State Attorney General’s Office, a Cold Case Detective Sergeant submitted the DNA to a lab for Genetic Genealogy – and got a match.
John Guillot Jr. was revealed to be the suspect, according to a press release from the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office.
However, he died in 2022 at age 65, just eight months before being identified. Detectives matched the suspect DNA to his biological son to confirm Guillot Jr. was in fact their suspect.
“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.”
Guillot Jr. was questioned in connection to the death of his girlfriend in 2010 and the death of his wife in 2020, though he was never arrested or charged with either’s death, according to records obtained by KING5.
There were no known connections between Tracy and Guillot Jr and detectives believe this was a stranger abduction, rape and murder, according to the release.
In an interview with KING5 News, Tracy’s father Ronald Whitney noted the importances of advances in DNA technology and genetic genealogy and how significant developments in other cases inspired hope for his daughter’s case.
“When the Golden State Killer got busted, I said, ‘This is it, this is the break that we’ve been waiting for,’” he said, referencing how DNA helped nab the Golden State Killer after years.
For years, Tracy’s family held onto hope for answers in her murder. But that hope faded with each year that passed with no news.
“I came to the conclusion that the only way we were going to find out what happened or who murdered my daughter was if he walked into the front door of the police station,” her father said.
Whitney remembers Tracy as a happy girl who always had a sparkle in her eye. He said the pain of losing his daughter has not faded.
“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.”
The case is now officially closed and classified as "Cleared Exceptional - Death of Offender,” according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.
While the identification of a suspect in Tracy’s murder brings some closure, the family continues to grapple with the idea that they will never find out exactly what happened.
“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,” Robin Whitney said.
“It’s kind of an empty feeling because now we know who did it. We know some background on him, but we’ll never find out the true story of what actually happened.”
