PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office has named Warren Gilbert Williams Jr. as a new person of interest in the 1984 case of 8-year-old Christy Luna’s disappearance. Williams, who was a convicted child sex offender, passed away in prison in 2016.
Christy disappeared on May 27, 1984, while heading to a nearby general store in Greenacres to buy cat food. Despite extensive searches and multiple leads over the past 40 years, no charges have been filed related to her case. Authorities identified Williams as a person of interest on Wednesday after receiving an anonymous tip last year.
Sgt. Chris Karpinski, an investigator with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office cold case unit, said the agency received an anonymous tip last year regarding Williams. The tip suggested Williams was remodeling a home near the general store on the day Christy vanished. “He left that home and his remodeling efforts to go buy cigarettes at Belks General Store and he never returned,” Karpinski said during a Wednesday press briefing. While Karpinski noted that reports of people in the area are common in such cases, he said this lead was particularly notable. “That alone, interesting information, but we have a lot of that information through the years where somebody was seen in the area and this and that,” he said.
The anonymous tip also led detectives to investigate a property in Lake Worth Beach where Williams lived at the time of the disappearance. The tipster alleged that Williams installed a concrete pad in his backyard just one week after Christy went missing.
Last month, authorities obtained permission from the current homeowners to excavate the yard. “Unfortunately, we found nothing,” Karpinski said. He described the “mixed emotions” the team felt when the search yielded no physical evidence. “We wanted to find something, but yet, finding something meant that, you know, we had bad news, at least it was for me,” Karpinski said. “So there is still hope that Christy either is out there or somebody is out there that knows where she is, whether she is still with us on Earth or has passed.”
Williams, who was 46 years old at the time Christy disappeared, had a criminal history involving what Karpinski described as a “peculiar past of sexual activity with children.” Williams was convicted of sexual battery against a child under 12 and lewd and lascivious molestation. He served time in Florida from 2007 to 2013, then was imprisoned in Alabama for the sexual abuse of a child.
Though his history is documented, Karpinski said there is currently no physical or testimonial evidence that links Williams to Christy’s disappearance. “We want to learn more about him,” Karpinski said. “I know it’s a long time ago. People, friends, neighbors, witnesses that day who think maybe they saw him, please come forward.”
Investigator Bill Springer has been handling the case since 1984 when the sheriff’s office took over the investigation. He stressed that no potential persons of interest previously identified are being dismissed. Springer encouraged anyone with relevant information to reach out to the sheriff’s office, no matter how much time has passed. “I want people to come forward,” Springer stated. “I’m not going to question why you didn’t come forward, because I don’t care. My job is to find Christy, not to judge people because they didn’t come forward.”
Springer urged anyone who has kept information secret for decades to contact investigators without delay. “So if you’ve got information and you’ve been sitting on it for 30 years, 40 years, I don’t care,” Springer said. “Bring it out and we’ll look at it, see what we can do with it.”
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