DNA Solves 1993 Murder of Illinois Mom After 33 Years

Thirty-Three Years. One DNA Sample. One Confession.

In November 1993, Randy Gail Sperino, 34, was last seen alive walking through Granite City, Illinois. She got into what a witness described as a dark-colored pickup truck from the late 1970s or early 1980s. Her body was found in a nearby field shortly after, bludgeoned to death.

The Madison County Sheriff’s Office opened a murder investigation. They have been working it ever since.

On May 26, 2026 - 33 years later - they arrested Albert Lee Zigler, 70, of Caseyville, Illinois, and charged him with first-degree murder.

What Investigators Found and What They Could Not

The case did not go cold for lack of effort. Investigators interviewed hundreds of people over the decades. They collected DNA from the crime scene and submitted it to the national Combined DNA Index System - CODIS - starting in 1998. Year after year, the database returned no match.

The problem was not the DNA. The problem was that whoever left it had never been logged in any law enforcement database.

For 33 years, the sample sat. Modern technology eventually changed what that meant.

How Othram Cracked It

Investigators turned to Othram, a Texas-based company specializing in forensic genealogy - a method that uses crime-scene DNA to build family trees rather than looking for exact database matches. Instead of waiting for a hit in CODIS, Othram’s process identifies distant relatives through genealogy databases and works backward to the suspect.

The technology produced a lead. That lead pointed to Albert Zigler.

When investigators confronted Zigler with what the DNA analysis had found, he admitted to the killing. Court documents allege he told investigators that he picked Sperino up in Granite City, brought her to his residence, beat her with a metal bat or steel pipe, and dumped her body in the field.

The Son Who Never Stopped Waiting

Wes Sperino was a child when his mother was murdered. He grew up without her. He spent decades not knowing who was responsible.

When the Madison County State’s Attorney’s Office called to tell him about the arrest, Wes Sperino told reporters: ‘I never thought that this day would come. I was ecstatic, and then I had immediate tears of joy, and I was just shocked that I was hearing the words, We got him.’

Randy Gail Sperino’s son waited 33 years for those three words.

What Happens Next

Albert Lee Zigler, 70, is charged with first-degree murder. He faces trial in Madison County, Illinois. No trial date has been set as of the time of this publication.

Othram’s forensic genealogy technology has now been used to solve dozens of cold cases across the country. The same method that identified the Golden State Killer in 2018 - building a family tree from DNA rather than matching a database - has continued expanding into state and local cold case investigations since then.

For the families of victims whose cases remain open, the message from the Sperino case is direct: old DNA is not dead evidence. It may simply be waiting for better technology.

References: DNA Breakthrough Leads to Arrest in Grisly 33-Year-Old Cold Case | ‘We Got Him’: Arrest Made in 33-Year Cold Case Murder | Man Charged in 33-Year-Old Madison County Cold Case