A North Carolina man is facing charges in the 1988 slaying of an Orlando, Florida, woman, after modern DNA testing helped police name a suspect in a case that had remained unsolved for nearly four decades, authorities said.
The Orlando Police Department said Thursday that Willie J. Carpenter was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service North Carolina Regional Task Force on a first-degree murder charge in connection with the death of Diane Matthews.
Matthews was found dead on Sept. 8, 1988, inside the downtown Orlando answering service where she was employed.
Orlando police have charged Willie Carpenter with first-degree murder in the 1988 killing of Diane Matthews. (Orlando Police Department)
According to police, Matthews suffered such severe facial injuries that she could not be immediately identified; a co-worker ultimately recognized her by her hair.
Investigators gathered fingerprints and biological material from the scene and interviewed numerous witnesses, but DNA analysis was not yet a routine tool in criminal investigations at the time.
Authorities said the evidence was preserved and detectives continued to follow potential leads, but no suspect was named and the investigation eventually became a cold case.
Undated images show Diane Matthews, who was discovered murdered at the Orlando answering service where she worked in September 1988. Police announced an arrest in the cold case nearly 38 years later. (Orlando Police Department)
The investigation took a significant turn more than two decades later when Carpenter’s DNA was entered into the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, following an unrelated arrest on charges related to a sexual offense in North Carolina with an underage female, police said.
Investigators identified Carpenter’s DNA as a potential match to biological evidence collected during the Matthews homicide investigation.
Detectives interviewed Carpenter in 2013, but he denied knowing Matthews and declined to provide a DNA sample.
Willie J. Carpenter was arrested July 9, 2026, and charged with first-degree murder in the 1988 killing of Orlando woman Diane Matthews, according to the Orlando Police Department. (Orlando Police Department)
When investigators interviewed Carpenter again in 2024, he voluntarily provided a DNA sample.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement conducted additional testing on the sample, producing results in 2025 that further strengthened the evidentiary link between Carpenter and biological evidence recovered from the crime scene, police said.
Detectives then spent months reviewing the evidence, consulting with prosecutors and eliminating other potential suspects before seeking an arrest warrant this year.
Carpenter was taken into custody without incident and remains in North Carolina pending extradition to Florida.
INC News has reached out to the Orlando Police Department for additional information, including court records and details surrounding the investigation.
