Nearly 30 years later, DNA evidence found on Williams' body has been matched to Morris John Frampton, a man who has spent nearly 28 years behind bars for the 1977 murder of another woman.

On Wednesday, King County prosecutors charged Frampton, 59, with second-degree murder in Williams' death — the first case to be charged by a newly formed team of deputy prosecutors working with police to solve approximately 550 unsolved slayings committed in King County over the past three decades, said prosecutor's spokesman Dan Donohoe.

Around noon on Oct. 19, 1976, Seattle homicide detectives were called to the 3000 block of Fairmont Way Southwest, where Williams' body had been found, charging papers say. An autopsy determined the 48-year-old's skull had been fractured, and that she'd been strangled, charging papers say. Among the evidence collected from Williams' body during the autopsy was a pubic hair, which was later logged into a Seattle police evidence room.

At the time of Williams' death, The Seattle Times reported that Williams' body was found in Fairmount Gulch — now part of Fairmount Park — near Harbor Avenue Southwest. Williams was thought to be a Native American originally from Port Alberni, B.C.; she last lived at a hotel in downtown Seattle, The Times reported.

In 2002, Seattle police cold-case Detective Gregg Mixsell sent evidence from the case to the State Patrol Crime Lab, charging papers say.

Mixsell and his partner, Detective Mike Ciesynski, who make up the Seattle Police Department's cold-case squad, routinely send evidence from unsolved homicides to the crime lab for analysis, said police spokeswoman Debra Brown.

Three years later, crime-lab scientists notified Mixsell that DNA from semen found on a pubic hair had been run through a federal database of felons' DNA and there was a match to Frampton, the papers say. Detectives then got another DNA sample from Frampton to double-check the match, which is routine, and determined he was a likely suspect.

In October, Mixsell and Ciesynski met with Frampton at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla. Prosecutors now think Frampton picked Williams up at a South Park tavern and drove her to a spot under the Admiral Way Bridge, where he killed her and pushed her body into a ravine, the papers say.

Ten months after Williams was killed, Frampton murdered Rosemary Stuart, a prostitute in her mid-20s whose body was found Aug. 9, 1977, at the South Park Marina on the Duwamish River. Stuart had been beaten to death with a metal pole, according to charging papers.

A King County jury sentenced Frampton to death in March 1978, but he escaped death row after parts of the state's death-penalty law were declared unconstitutional in 1981. His sentence was reduced to life in prison without the possibility of release, but in January 1988 the state Court of Appeals ruled Frampton had been improperly sentenced.

In October 1988, a King County Superior Court judge ruled that the standard range of 20 years in prison wasn't enough for Frampton. The judge sentenced him to an exceptional sentence of 50 years behind bars.

According to Mary Christensen, a state Department of Corrections spokeswoman, Frampton was moved in November from the state penitentiary in Walla Walla, where he served the bulk of his sentence, to the Stafford Creek Corrections Center near Aberdeen.

Frampton had earned early release set for 2011, Christian said.

Frampton is expected to be arraigned on the new murder charge on March 1, Donohoe said.

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