‘A measure of justice’ after nearly 40 years: Killer who beat and ran over woman released after taking plea deal

Over the nearly 40 years since Carla Lowe, 21, last celebrated her birthday, her killer, born one day after her in 1961, remained free to celebrate his.

Then, in 2021, a new piece of evidence led to his arrest in a case Lowe’s family had long accepted might never be solved.

On Tuesday, less than a year later, he walked out of jail, free again.

Ralph Williams, now 60, beat Lowe to death on a Sunday morning in 1983 and ran her over with a car, according to court records. Her body was found on a road near the Delray Beach train station, beaten so badly that her family had to have a closed casket funeral, said her younger sister, Jacqueline Lowe-Repass.

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Repass, 18 at the time, was supposed to go with Lowe to the train station that night, but changed her mind, she said.

“She was everything,” Repass said of Lowe. “She was my best friend, my best friend.”

On Tuesday, Williams accepted a plea deal in Palm Beach County Court that reduced his charges from first-degree murder to manslaughter with a weapon. He was sentenced to a year in prison and 10 years of probation but was credited with a year of time served and released on probation.

The deal concludes a year of twists and turns in a decades-long saga where justice was always slightly out of the family’s reach. Though they aren’t happy with the plea deal, after years of wondering if they would ever know her killer’s name, they have accepted what they see as an imperfect form of justice.

“I fully understand where the state of Florida is coming from when they offered what they offered because the reality is it’s like a chess game with anything,” said Danny Cogdill, Lowe’s nephew.

As a teenager, she raised him and his siblings while his mother was at work, he said. He remembered the magic show she put on for them and the encyclopedias she made them hold as punishment when they got in trouble.

The same day that Lowe’s body was found, detectives had arrested Williams on unrelated charges. And they investigated Williams in relation to the case in 1983 after his fellow inmates told them that he had confessed to her murder, according to court records. They searched his home and found a chunk of bloody reddish hair. But they pressed no charges and the case went cold.

In 2005, detectives reopened the case and conducted DNA testing, which provided no leads. They closed the case again.

Finally, in February 2021, police used new technology to extract a fingerprint from a butter knife found with her body. It was Williams’. A grand jury indicted him in November.

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In September, his defense team filed a motion for pretrial release, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to keep Williams in jail without bond. The judge rejected it. But two months later, Williams accepted the plea deal and was released for good.

“Today’s guilty plea and sentence, while imperfect, hopefully provides a measure of justice for the family of homicide victim Carla Lowe in this nearly 40-year-old cold case,” Palm Beach County state attorney Dave Aronberg said in a statement. “I want to thank prosecutor AleatheaMcRoberts and detectives from Delray Beach Police for the hard work that led to the conviction of Ralph Williams.”

Only a day earlier, Williams had shocked family members who had arrived for the sentencing by rejecting the plea deal and filing a motion requesting a new court-appointed defense. The judge denied the motion, so Williams said he would hire his own attorney. Then, by the next day, he had changed his mind.

Repass had flown to South Florida from North Carolina to give her victim impact statement ahead of what she thought would be the conclusion of the trial. She sat in the courtroom Monday, staring at Williams in person for the first time. Her heart raced, not with fear, but with anger.

She said she mouthed choice words at him.

“It felt like I was going to pass out because I was so angry,” she said. “So angry that he sat there with that smirk on his face.”

When Williams rejected the deal, Repass felt frustrated, even though she wasn’t happy about the deal, either. She and other family members had come to South Florida to see the case conclude, not continue.

A few hours later, she said, she got the call that he decided to take the deal. After decades, the case of her sister’s death was closed. For Repass, it was an imperfect conclusion, but one she had learned to accept.

“In a perfect world, I would have liked him to be brought to trial in 1983 and put to death for what he did to her,” said Repass. “But no, he lived 39 years. While she didn’t.”