The body of 19-year-old University of Cincinnati freshman Cheryl Thompson was discovered on the banks of the Little Miami River in Loveland, Ohio, on April 8, 1978, two weeks after she vanished following a night out. For 44 years, her brutal murder remained a haunting cold case, leaving a family shattered and a community searching for answers that seemed forever out of reach. That agonizing wait for justice finally ended in November 2022, when authorities announced they had identified her killer using advanced genetic genealogy, bringing a long-awaited, bittersweet resolution to a mystery that had spanned nearly half a century.
Cheryl Thompson was a young woman with a bright future, described by everyone who knew her as a smart, kind-hearted, and fun-loving teenager. She had been admitted to the University of Cincinnati to study nursing, a profession she had dreamed of since childhood, and she lived with her parents in the city. Her older brother, Bill Thompson, remembered her as someone who cared deeply about everything and everyone, a person who was everyone’s best friend.
On the evening of March 24, 1978, Cheryl left her parents’ home on Wooster Pike to meet her boyfriend at the Gatsby disco in the Oakley neighborhood of Cincinnati.
Her friend Laura Bressert had initially planned to join her but called back to cancel, pleading with Cheryl not to go because she had a bad feeling. Cheryl, however, was determined and did not listen. She said goodbye to her brother Dan and drove away from the house around 10:30 PM.
That was the last time anyone saw her alive. Her boyfriend arrived at the disco and waited, but when she did not show up by midnight, he grew deeply worried. He stepped outside and found her car parked a short distance away, locked and empty.
After searching the area and finding no trace of her, he went to her parents’ home, got a spare key, and moved her car to a legal parking spot. He continued searching through the night, but there was no sign of Cheryl. In a bizarre twist, he later saw her car being driven away by an unknown man.
He gave chase but could not keep up, and the vehicle was lost. The car was found the next day on Box Street, several blocks from the disco, but Cheryl herself had vanished without a trace. A massive search involving the Cincinnati Police Department, Hamilton County sheriff’s deputies, and a helicopter from the Ohio Highway Patrol yielded nothing.
The search continued for weeks, but it was on the morning of April 8, 1978, that a game warden named Mike, from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, was walking along the bank of the Little Miami River in Loveland. He came upon a decomposing body entangled in shrubs about 20 feet from the water. The woman was fully clothed, still wearing shoes, socks, and jewelry, but her undergarments appeared to have been tampered with, and there were bruises on her neck.
The body was identified through dental charts as Cheryl Thompson.
An autopsy revealed the horrific truth: Cheryl had been raped, strangled, and struck on the head with an unknown object. The coroner believed she had been dead for approximately three days before her body was found. A rape kit was collected and stored at the Hamilton County coroner’s office, but the technology available at the time was not advanced enough to analyze the DNA evidence.
Detectives had no suspects, and the case quickly went cold. Cheryl’s parents died without ever knowing who had killed their daughter, but her brothers, Bill and Dan, never gave up hope.
In 2010, detectives from the Loveland Police Department and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation decided to re-examine the evidence. They sent the DNA from Cheryl’s rape kit to a lab, which produced a partial DNA profile. When checked against criminal databases, it returned no matches.
The case remained unsolved for another decade. Then, in 2022, authorities took a groundbreaking step: they sent the semen sample from the rape kit to a third-party genealogy company. Using genetic genealogy, which involves comparing DNA to determine familial relationships, the company identified a family tree.
Three individuals were singled out from that family: a brother, a cousin, and an uncle. All three were located and agreed to cooperate fully with the investigation. They provided semen samples for testing, but the results showed that none of their DNA matched the killer’s.
However, the three men provided a crucial piece of information: they had a brother named Ralph Howell, who had died in a car accident in 1985 at the age of 35. With this new lead, detectives obtained a warrant to exhume Howell’s body from Rest Haven Memorial Park in Evendale.
Ralph Howell’s jawbone was removed and sent for forensic analysis. The results were exactly what investigators had hoped for: the DNA from the jawbone matched the DNA recovered from Cheryl Thompson’s body. After 44 years, the case was finally solved.
Retired Detective Steve Moster, who worked on the case, said, “We couldn’t have done this without science.” Bill and Dan Thompson were contacted and given the news. Bill told the media, “It was a complete surprise to me that it was a complete unknown person with no previous history to Cheryl.”
A closer look at Ralph Howell’s past revealed a disturbing criminal history. Before his death, he worked as a newspaper delivery man for the Cincinnati Enquirer. In 1983, five years after Cheryl’s murder, he attempted to abduct a woman.
According to reports, he stopped her by the side of the road and offered her a ride home in his delivery truck. She initially refused but eventually got in. Howell then told her he wanted to have 𝒔𝒆𝒙, placed a rope around her neck, and began to strangle her.
She fought back, and after a struggle, he stopped the truck and let her go. He was arrested and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of unlawful restraint.
Detectives also believe Howell may be responsible for the deaths of three other women who were found raped and strangled between 1976 and 1978: 17-year-old Charmaine Stolla, 18-year-old Nancy Ann Theobald, and 24-year-old Victoria Hincher. Unlike Cheryl’s case, no DNA evidence was obtained from those murders. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters stated, “I have prosecuted multiple serial killers in my time as prosecutor.
My office firmly believes he is another.” Even though Howell was dead, detectives met with Cheryl’s family and offered them the opportunity to present the evidence to a jury for further closure.
The family agreed, and on November 17, 2022, Ralph Howell was indicted on one count of aggravated murder and one count of rape. Although there would be no trial, the indictment provided a sense of finality for Cheryl’s loved ones. Bill Thompson said, “For me, it helped finalizing it, knowing that a person had been charged with the murder of my sister.
Whether he was dead or not, it really didn’t matter to me.” Laura Bressert, Cheryl’s friend who had begged her not to go to the disco, expressed her gratitude. “She was a really good person.
She didn’t deserve something like that. I really am grateful. Thank you guys finally that you got him,” she said.
The tireless work of the Loveland Police Department and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation was commended by officials. They never stopped searching for Cheryl Thompson’s killer, and over four decades later, her family finally has closure. The case serves as a stark reminder of the pain that unsolved murders inflict on families and the relentless pursuit of justice that can eventually bring answers, even after decades of silence.
Cheryl Thompson’s story is one of tragedy, but also of the power of science and determination to uncover the truth, no matter how long it takes.
