‘We did this for that little girl.’ Manatee crime analyst’s relentless digging solves a murder

You have to be a critical thinker with an analytical mind when your career involves digging into volumes of data until that mountain of information finally tells a story.

In this case, the story was of Amber Woods, a 16-year-old girl murdered because her then 20-year-old boyfriend thought she was pregnant and didn’t want to be labeled a sex predator, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.

Detectives say Ralph Williams then conspired with his brothers to kidnap and kill Woods, whose body was found alongside State Road 62 near the Hardee County line.

Detectives never gave up on the case.

Though Williams and his brothers were suspects early on, there wasn’t enough evidence to develop probable cause for an arrest until Elicia Main, a crime analyst for the sheriff’s office, found the proverbial pin in a massive haystack of data.

Cellphone records were able to put Williams, now 35, near the scene at the time of the murder. But it was no ordinary data and no ordinary task to decipher the puzzle.

Williams has now been charged with second-degree murder along with his brother Tyjuan, 32. Their half-brother Jarmain Brown took a plea deal of accessory to murder after the fact in exchange for his cooperation.

“It obviously meant a lot and I didn’t know a lot of the details of the case when I first began the analysis of the cellphone records,” Main said in an interview with the Bradenton Herald.

“Our unit likes to be involved in the analytical part without getting into the emotional side of an investigation,” she said. “We try to be very impartial because our brains do think analytically and we stay focused on the data.”

But working on a murder case involving a 16-year-old girl was different, and Main found herself more connected on a personal level the further down she dug.

“So originally, when we got the data, I knew a 16-year-old girl had died and I think if anybody hears that information, it kind of gives you a little more drive to say that you want to find out what happened to this girl,” Main said. “So when I saw there was evidence we could do something with, it meant that much more to me.

“So the more I got involved in the case, I got more interested in what happened to this girl. The phones tell a story in this case and like the sheriff said, it’s a diary of what happened in that case.”

But you have to know how to read the language the information is trying to tell.

“The more I got into the case, the more I wanted to know what happened and say whatever happened to this little girl, we’re going to figure it out,” she said. “The closer we got, the more passionate I got about it because I don’t think anybody deserves to die that way.”

It all started with two very large notebooks of data that detectives brought to Main in 2017. For the next three years, she took that data and “went down the rabbit hole, as we like to say. I can tell you that I worked on it for years. It took a long time to go back through that data.”

That’s because cellphone data from 2006 is very different than it is today. Now, smart phones are full of usable technology. But in 2006, most people used flip phones for texts or phone calls, and that was the extent of the technology at the time.

Main said the key wasn’t so much analyzing the old technology as it was understanding it and how it applied to current cellphone tower technology.

Once Main determined that the tower technology hasn’t changed that much, it became apparent that she would be able to decipher the information, but that it would take time. Main said none of the data was digitized, so that had to be done first before she could begin to analyze and map the data.

“That was the longest part of this process,” she said.

But it’s not like you feed in all the data and some machine spits out a prize. Main said there was really no single “gotcha” moment.

“It was really an aha process moment and didn’t really come all at once,” she explained. “We got the notebooks and I knew we had some information that we can do something with, but would have to dig down into it and take the time to go through it. In the end, when I finally got it all up there and were able to come with the story line of the phone, that was the best aha moment.”

But the reality still wouldn’t kick in until the arrest warrants were signed and the Williams brothers were charged with Woods’ murder.

“She had people that she trusted and that was her outcome and I think that’s a horrible way to die,” Main said. “Throughout the entire process it occurred to me that these people have been out there living their lives while this case went cold and while this little girl was not with us anymore. So it’s definitely weighed on me.”

Main couldn’t escape the case that had become attached to her, whether at work or at home. It was always on her mind. The successful closure of the case is still something she’s trying to let settle after spending years putting the puzzle together.

“But I didn’t think about the gravity of it all until we could tell the world,” she said. “We could tell the world that we did this for that little girl.”

Main spoke to the world last week after the sheriff’s office announced the charges. It was the first time Main met Amber Woods’ family, and it was only for a moment, albeit an emotional one.

“I told the sheriff I didn’t want to get up there and speak before I gave more of a technical answer,” Main said. “And the reason for that is because I didn’t want to get choked up about it because it does mean a lot to me that I was able to provide this to their family.”

This story was originally published December 25, 2020 at 7:00 AM.