Fingerprints lead to arrest in 1978 homicide at mobile-home park near Renton

Published 3:22 pm Friday, September 23, 2011

Arlene Roberts, an 80-year-old widow, was found dead more than 30 years ago in her trailer at the Lakeshore Manor Mobile Home Park on Lake Washington.

Thursday, a 50-year-old man was charged in her homicide after his arrest in Reno, Nevada, by cold-case detectives with the King County Sheriff’s Department. Ronald Wayne MacDonald is being held in a Reno jail on $2 million bail. An extradition hearing is planned.

He’s in jail because of advances in fingerprint analysis.

“DNA gets all the attention,” said Sheriff Sue Rahr. “But other advances, including fingerprint identification via AFIS, solve crimes as well. It is very gratifying to finally solve the murder of an 80 year-old woman, thanks to AFIS and great detective work.

Roberts was found dead on Oct. 28, 1978, in her trailer at the mobile home park at 11448 Rainier Ave S. in Bryn Mawr, where she lived alone. No one had seen her for several days, so neighbors checked on her, according to Sgt. John Urquhart, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, who outlined the case in a news release Friday.

Roberts’ hands and feet were tied with nylon stockings and there was a gag in her mouth. A hair net was tightened around her neck. The trailer was ransacked.

A King County Police spokesman said at the time there was little hard evidence in the case, although detectives thought robbery was a motive, according to a short story in the Nov. 1, 1978, Renton Record Chronicle.

An autopsy determined she was strangled to death.

With little evidence to go on, the case went cold and was never solved.

But in 2010 detectives from the Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit looked at what evidence had been collected, including fingerprints from the crime scene. Because of advances in Automated Fingerprint Identification System or AFIS technology, prints could be entered into the system that previously may have not met the criteria for quality or detail, according to Urquhart.

AFIS technicians found matches to MacDonald on three items from the crime scene, including a bank statement and a Traveler’s Cheque, according to Urquhart.

In checking MacDonald’s background, detectives discovered he lived seven blocks north of Roberts on Rainier Avenue.

MacDonald also was booked into jail twice in 1978 on burglary charges. By 1979 he had moved to Florida and was arrested for burglary in 1979 and 1980. He served prison time in Florida and Washington.

MacDonald was arrested in Nevada in 1992 and in 2001. He lives in Reno, where he was interviewed by Sheriff’s Office detectives last June.