Two weeks after Sal Mineo's murder, when the Los Angeles Police arrested a 19-year-old named Lionel Ray Williams on an unrelated robbery charge, he told investigators he'd heard Sal Mineo had been murdered during a drug deal gone wrong, according to Michael Gregg Michaud's 2010 book "Sal Mineo: A Biography." The police believed Williams' had made up the story to cover his own tracks, but when Williams' mother gave him an alibi, that angle went cold.

Finally, in May 1977, Williams' wife, Theresa Williams, told detectives her husband had murdered Mineo, per Sal Mineo: A Biography. When Williams returned home on the night of the killing, he was covered in blood, told her he stabbed a man, and later, when he saw a news story about Mineo, told Theresa, "that's the dude I killed," according to the book. The detectives hadn't initially believed it was a robbery since the victim's wallet hadn't been stolen, according to The Hollywood Reporter, but that's what it turned out to be. Williams had stabbed Mineo to shut him up and then ran off after getting nothing, per Michaud's book. The original suspect, described as being a white man with long blond hair, turned out to be a bystander who'd chased after the actual killer, per The Hollywood Reporter.

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